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Description
Evidence concerning inequality in ability to realize aspirations is prevalent: overall, in specialized segments of the labor market, in self-employment and high-aspirations environments. Empirical literature and public debate are full of case studies and comprehensive empirical studies documenting the paramount gap between successful individuals (typically ethnic majority men) and those who are less likely to “make it” (typically ethnic minority and women). So far the drivers of these disparities and their consequences have been studies much less intensively, due to methodological constraints and shortage of appropriate data. This project proposes significant innovations to overcome both types of barriers and push the frontier of the research agenda on equality in reaching aspirations. Overall, project is interdisciplinary, combining four fields: management, economics, quantitative methods and psychology. An important feature of this project is that it offers a diversified methodological perspective, combining applied microeconometrics, as well as experimental methods. We thus contribute to the literature in economics, management, psychology and quantitative methods. In addition to research papers, our project will generate new data and new algorithms. Junior scholars will benefit from interaction in an international team of renowned scholars. Finally, policy papers will be developed to disseminate the results of our studies to general public.
Summary of project results
In this project our objective was to fill the knowledge gaps on the extent of potential bias against women in high aspiration environments. In the project we focused on the examples of female entrepreneurship, women in top corporate positions, and women in academia.
For female entrepreneurship, two important gaps were identified as the starting point for this project. First, the relationship between gender discrimination in the labor markets and starting up own business was unknown. Some prior research provided conflicting evidence and we thought that empirically the existing studies did not provide sufficiently direct identification. We find that greater gender wage inequality is associated with higher prevalence of self-employment for both men and women. Relative to men, women are actually discouraged from self-employment, which is consistent with the notion that discriminative labor markets are typically signs of discriminative societies. Second, the literature was unclear about the hiring potential of companies founded by women. Using administrative data in Norway, we traced the stories of start-ups, both founded by women and men. companies founded by women, regardless of other factors, are sooner to hire their first employee. However, as time passes, startups founded by men tend to surpass headcount of comparable companies founded by women.
For women in top corporate positions, we built a database of European covering 11 million companies from 40 countries for the past 40 years. This is the largest database of its kind, and allows analyzing changes in the role of women on boards of directors and supervisory boards. Interesting facts emerge from the data. The percentage of companies without any woman on the board was 67% in Europe in 2019. Companies (co-)governed by women are more efficient. These results are strong overall, but mask heterogeneity: the benefits if greater diversity accrue mostly in the service sectors. We thus indirectly confirm that discrimination against women reduces the talent pool and leads to the promotion of inferior managers. Yet, companies use default quotas and do not treat women and men equally. Based on the distribution of the share of women on companies'' boards of directors and supervisory boards, we estimated whether companies hire women and men on an equal basis, based only on qualifications, or whether they use implicit quotas. Empirical evidence shows that firms target a given (usually small) percentage of women on boards rather than equality per se.
For women in academia, our experimental work revealed no strong discrimination by uninvolved experts. Thus, we propose a feasible way to assure gender-equal hiring in the context position: external members of the selection committee can help to alleviate the potential gender bias in hiring.
The Polish team devoted a huge chunk of the project time to harmonizing and disseminating the Gender Board Diversity Database. The GBDD is available free of charge to all who are interested to analyze the issue of women in corporate boards. We share the spreadsheets with detailed statistic for each country, and sector, over time. This way, anybody can observe if their private company is similar to the average or perhaps differs in terms of gender equality. This database can be used by journalists and influencers, to make the debate about gender board diversity nested in facts and data. Finally, all scientists have access to our replication codes, hence they can expand on this agenda further.
The Polish and Norwegian teams jointly explored this novel data source for the three research papers, and the Polish team used this data to develop several more research papers studying the drivers and the consequences of gender board diversity.
The Norwegian team also participated in conferences organized by the Polish team (in addition to the mandatory kick-off and closing meetings, the partnership organized several editions of the international GGaps conference, focusing on the research agenda of this project).
The partnership developed three joint research papers in collaboration between the Polish team and the Norwegian team.
The Norwegian team developed one additional research paper. This paper was based on administrative data for Norway. The access to this data is restricted to scientists affiliated with Norwegian academic institutions.
The Polish team developed six additional research papers. An additional paper will be written based on collected experimental data and one more study on observational data was already started. The number of new research papers in the pipeline is likely to expand, as scholars learn about the Gender Board Diversity Database and we form new partnerships to advance this research agenda.
The partnership disseminated the project results to diverse audiences. We met with businesses to address the concerns which arise over gender diversity in high management ranks. An important outcomes of our project for the general audience are the op-eds and the podcasts disseminating state-of-the-art science via communication channels that are now widely consumed as leisure cultural goods.
Summary of bilateral results
The evolution of the bilateral collaboration was significant. Both teams actively contributed to disseminating the findings through conferences, symposiums, lectures, and seminars for students. In particular, the international project team organized a series of scientific conferences (GGaps) devoted to the project research agenda. This bilateral collaboration seems highly beneficial for the project, particularly in leveraging diverse expertise and perspectives and broadening its impact.