Mommy tracks and public policy: On self-fulfilling prophecies and gender gaps in promotion
Kjell Lommerud (),
Odd Rune Straume and
Steinar Vagstad
No 5/2013, NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho
Abstract:
Consider a model with two types of jobs. The profitability of promoting a worker to a fast-track job depends not only on his or her observable talent, but also on incontractible effort. We investigate whether self-fulfilling expectations may lead to higher promotion standards for women. If employers expect women to do more household work than men, thereby exerting less effort in their paid job, then women must be more talented to make promotion profitable. Moreover, specialization in the family will then result in women doing most of the household work. Such self-fulfilling prophecies can be defeated: both affirmative action and family policy can make women spend more effort in the market, which can lead the economy to a non-discriminatory equilibrium. However, we find that it is unlikely that temporary policy can move the economy to a symmetric equilibrium: policy must be made permanent. Anti-discrimination policy need not enhance efficiency, and from a distribution viewpoint this is a policy with both winners and losers.
Keywords: self-fulfilling prophecies; gender discrimination; promotion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J16 J22 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www3.eeg.uminho.pt/economia/nipe/docs/2013/NIPE_WP_05_2013.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Mommy tracks and public policy: on self-fulfilling prophecies and gender gaps in promotion (2006) 
Working Paper: Mommy Tracks and Public Policy: On Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Gender Gaps in Promotion (2000) 
Working Paper: Mommy Tracks and Public Policy: On Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Gender Gaps in Promotion (2000)
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:nip:nipewp:05/2013
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho Núcleo de Investigação em Políticas Económicas e Empresariais, Escola de Economia e Gestão, Universidade do Minho, P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by NIPE ().