Hot Topics in Gender and Economics
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (CST)
- Chair: Orgul Ozturk, University of South Carolina
The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military
Abstract
In 2015, the US military removed one of the final explicit occupational barriers to women in the United States by opening all positions to women, including historically male-only combat occupations. Introducing a small number of women into a previously all-male group or occupation has the potential to introduce interpersonal conflict, potentially hindering both group performance and the performance of men themselves. In this paper, we exploit the systematic integration of women into infantry and armor units to estimate the causal effect of the introduction of female colleagues on men's job performance and satisfaction, using monthly administrative personnel records and rich survey responses measuring organizational climate. We estimate the causal effect of the introduction of women on men's behavior, performance, and reported views using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. In each year beginning in 2017, approximately 5\% of units affected by the policy change received their first cohort of women, and units integrated in each year were not chosen strategically.We will measure men's perceived views of unit performance and cohesion, presence of sexual harassment and discrimination, and leader responses to harassment and discrimination using responses to the Defense Organizational Climate Survey (DEOCS), a roughly annual survey
designed to measure units' organizational climates. We measure men's performance from records that reveal timing and reason for separation from the Army, promotions and demotions, criminal offenses, drug use, work-limiting medical profiles, and physical fitness test scores. Preliminary results reveal little evidence that integrating women into previously all-male units negatively impacts men's performance outcomes. Many of our results are precise enough to rule out large detrimental effects. For example, our point estimates indicate that exposure to female colleagues did not affect male soldiers' likelihood to stay in the Army, and in fact we can rule out any decline in retention larger than 1.5 percentage points.
What Works for Working Couples? Work Arrangements, Child Penalty and Home Production
Abstract
Which work arrangements do mothers prefer, and how do these work arrangements affect the child penalty they experience? The Australian 2009 Fair Work Act explicitly entitled parents of young children to request a (reasonable) change in work arrangements. Leveraging variation in the timing of the law, timing of childbirth, and the bite of the law across different occupations and industries, we establish two main results. First, if allowed to request a change in work arrangements, new mothers ask to work slightly less than full-time with a regular schedule. Second, with regular schedules, working mothers' child penalty declined from a 47 percent drop in hours worked to a 40 percent drop. For the most exposed mothers, the Fair Work Act led to both a doubling in schedule regularity, and a 30% decrease in the child penalty in hours of work.Full-Time Mothers, Part-Time Workers
Abstract
We study indivisibility of labor as key determinant of the choice of mothers to return to work after giving birth. A 2015 Italian law gave parents the right to turn a full-time contract into a part-time contract for the duration of parental leave: by comparing new parents before and after the law, we can study whether this provision changed maternal labor supply. Additionally, relying on self-employed workers as a control group, we can assess the effect of leave length and part-time work on the child penalty. This could go in either direction, depending on whether the compliers are mothers that in absence of the law would have worked full-time or not worked. In order to disentangle the net effect into the two different treatment margins, we rely on an instrumental variable approach.Discussant(s)
Olga Stoddard
,
Brigham Young University
Scott Carrell
,
University of California-Davis
Tobey Kass
,
U.S. Treasury Department
Melanie Khamis
,
Wesleyan University
JEL Classifications
- I0 - General
- I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty