Gender Prescribed Occupations and the Wage Gap

Matteo Broso, Andrea Gallice and Caterina Muratori ()

No 1529, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Men and women often sort into different jobs, and male-dominated jobs typically pay more than female-dominated ones. Why is that the case? We propose a model where workers have heterogeneous attitudes with respect to the social norms that define gender prescribed occupations and face endogenous social costs when entering jobs deemed "appropriate" for the other gender. We show that: (i) workers trade off identity and wage considerations in deciding where to work; (ii) asymmetric social norms contribute to the gender pay gap by deterring women from entering higher-paying male-dominated sectors; (iii) breaking social norms generates positive externalities, reducing social stigma for everyone. Therefore, in equilibrium, there are too few social norm breakers.

Keywords: Occupational Segregation; Wage Gap; Social Norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/306682/1/GLO-DP-1529.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1529

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().