Brain versus brawn: the realization of women's comparative advantage

Michelle Rendall

No 491, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: In the last decades the US economy experienced a rise in female labor force participation, a reversal of the gender education gap and a closing of the gender wage gap. Importantly, these changes occurred at a substantially different pace over time. During the same period, workers in the US faced a considerable shift in labor demand from more physical to more intellectual skill requirements. I rationalize these observations in the context of a general equilibrium model displaying two key assumptions: (1) the demand for brain increases both within and across education groups; and (2) women have less brawn than men. Given the observed US technical change process, the model replicates (1) over half of the narrowing gender wage gap, (2) most of the narrowing employment gap, and (3) all of the reversing education gap. Crucially, the model can also account for the time-varying-path of the narrowing gender divide with an initial stagnation and a later acceleration in female wages and education rates.

Keywords: Technological progress; labor demand; skills; female labor supply; gender education gap; gender wage gap; college attainment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E23 I24 J16 J23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-09, Revised 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mac
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Brain versus Brawn: The Realization of Women's Comparative Advantage (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:491

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