Are Male Bosses Bad for Women’s Careers? Evidence from a Multinational Corporation

Moritz Drechsel-Grau and Felix Holub

No 11622, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study whether gender-based favoritism impedes women’s career progression using data from a European multinational corporation. Leveraging manager reassignments, we show that manager gender does not affect gender differences, neither in wage growth nor in promotion rates. Remarkably, this holds across a wide range of countries and departments, i.e., workforces that differ substantially in terms of gender norms, occupations, and gender composition, but are all subject to the same management practices and corporate culture. Analyzing performance and potential ratings, we find that manager gender only matters in low-stakes decisions that do not affect managers’ own career prospects.

Keywords: gender wage and promotion gap; manager gender; favouritism; performance and potential ratings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J30 J71 M14 M51 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11622

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