The Role of Technology in Reducing the Gender Gap in Productivity

Xavier Cirera, Marcio Jose Vargas Da Cruz, Antonio Soares Martins Neto, Kyungmin Lee and Caroline Gomes Nogueira

No 10771, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper explores new firm-level data to examine the gender gap in technology adoption and the associated effect on firm performance. The data show a small difference in technology sophistication between firms managed by women and those managed by men, but there are larger differences in terms of labor productivity. Firms with female top managers are just as likely to adopt the most sophisticated technologies for general business functions that are common across all firms except for enterprise resource planning. However, firms managed by women adopt advanced technologies less frequently for sector-specific business functions. The study also finds that firms with higher technology sophistication tend to have higher productivity and the returns to the use of more sophisticated technologies are larger in businesses managed by women, which helps to narrow the productivity gap between firms managed by women and those managed by men.

Date: 2024-05-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff and nep-sbm
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