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  5. Gender Disparities: Evidence on Causes and Implications
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Gender Disparities: Evidence on Causes and Implications

Paper Session

Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)

Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: Marianne Bertrand, University of Chicago

Gender Differences in Medical Evaluations: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Workers’ Compensation Doctors

Marika Cabral
,
University of Texas-Austin
Marcus Dillender
,
University of Illinois-Chicago

Abstract

There are concerns that women’s medical issues are not taken as seriously as men’s medical issues, leading women have reduced access to both medical care and social insurance benefits where eligibility is determined by medical examinations. Gender disparities in the physician workforce could play a role in disparities in medical evaluations and impairment assessments if patients and physicians having similar characteristics and backgrounds improves physician-patient communication or reduces physician bias against a patient or against the types of injuries that the patient is likely to have. However, studying the role of provider sex in impairment assessments is difficult because both patients and physicians can often influence patient-physician matches. In this paper, we study gender differences in health care providers’ impairment assessments of injured workers who are randomly assigned to providers for medical evaluations. Our setting is the Texas workers’ compensation system, which allows insurers and claimants to request independent medical evaluations to settle disputes over a worker’s impairment severity. Conditional on a claimant’s county, assignment of a claimant to a provider is random among providers with similar credentials, and workers’ compensation insurers must pay benefits to injured workers based on the provider’s assessment. We find that male and female claimants evaluated by female providers receive additional cash benefits at rates similar to male claimants evaluated by male providers but that female claimants evaluated by male providers are less likely to receive additional cash benefits after a medical exam relative to other claimants. Our findings indicate that parity in the sex ratio of providers performing these medical exams would not affect male claimants’ cash benefits but would lower the gender imbalance in rates of receiving additional cash benefits after medical exams by leading to female claimants being more likely to receive additional cash benefits after medical exams.

COVID-19 Disruptions Disproportionately Affect Female Academics

Tatyana Deryugina
,
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
Olga Shurchkov
,
Wellesley College
Jenna Stearns
,
University of California-Davis

Abstract

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent counter-measures, such as school closures, shift to working from home, and social distancing are disrupting economic activity around the world. As with other major economic shocks, there are winners and losers, leading to increased inequality across certain groups. In this project, we investigate the effects of COVID-19 on the gender gap in productivity among academics. First, we track the patterns of publications and working paper series submissions of male and female authors before and after COVID-19, performing a simple difference-in-difference analysis to see whether the trends diverge after COVID-19. Preliminary findings from economics suggest that female economists experienced significant declines in submissions in the early months of the pandemic, relative to the mean. Second, we conduct a broad survey of academics across various disciplines to collect more nuanced data on the respondents’ circumstances, such as spouse employment, the number and age of children, and time use. We find that female academics, particularly those who have children, report a disproportionate reduction in time dedicated to research relative to comparable men and women without children. Both men and women report substantial increases in childcare and housework burdens, but women experienced significantly larger increases relative to men.

Gender Differences in Politician Persistence

Melanie Wasserman
,
University of California-Los Angeles

Abstract

Why are women underrepresented in politics? This paper documents gender differences in the career paths of novice politicians. Using trajectories of over 11,000 candidates for local office in California and a regression discontinuity approach, I investigate the persistence of candidates after they win or lose elections. Losing an election causes 56 percent more attrition among female than male candidates: an electoral loss causes men to be 16 percentage points less likely to run again within the next four years, whereas the drop for women is 25 percentage points. Yet the gender gap in persistence depends on the setting: I find no evidence of a gap among candidates for high female representation offices or among more experienced candidates. These results suggest that in low information environments, voters may penalize novice female politicians, which deters women from running again. I discuss the implications for the gender gap in officeholding.

Flexible Pay, Bargaining, and the Gender Gap

Barbara Biasi
,
Yale University
Heather Sarsons
,
University of Chicago

Abstract

Existing evidence suggests that women fare worse than men in situations where they are required to bargain over a prize. Does the introduction of individual pay negotiations in industries historically characterized by rigid salaries disproportionately penalize women? We study this question by focusing on teachers in the aftermath of Wisconsin’s Act 10, a 2011 state bill which dramatically redefined the rules of collective bargaining for public sector unions. Before Act 10, teacher pay was strictly determined on the basis of seniority and academic credentials using salary schedules, negotiated between each school district and the teacher’s union. After Act 10, unions lost the authority to bargain over the schedule and districts became free to set teachers’ pay more flexibly and on an individual basis. Using variation in the timing of expiration of collective bargaining agreements, we estimate the effect of the introduction of flexible pay on the difference in salaries of male and female teachers with similar seniority and education. We show that the introduction of flexible pay led to a significant decline in women’s salaries relative to their male counterpart. This decline is not driven by a differential propensity for women to move across districts, differences in ability, or a higher scarcity of male teachers. The gap, however, appears larger in schools with male principals and districts with a male superintendent. Results from a survey of Wisconsin teachers confirms that female teachers are less likely to negotiate pay compared with their male counterparts, especially when their superintendent is a man, because they do not feel comfortable doing so.
Discussant(s)
Adriana Lleras-Muney
,
University of California-Los Angeles
Olga Stoddard
,
Brigham Young University
Elizabeth Cascio
,
Dartmouth College
Clémentine Van Effenterre
,
University of Toronto
JEL Classifications
  • J1 - Demographic Economics