[Research Seminar] IFLAME: “Executive gender gap in promotion: Evidence from a large French firm” M. LETURCQ – INED

Speaker: Marion LETURCQ
INED
Joint work with Laurent GOBILLON (Paris School of Economis CNRS), Dominique MEURS (Paris Nanterre & Ined )
and Marion MONNET (IREDU Université de Bourgogne)

Date and Location – Thursday February 16th 2023 from 12:00 to 13:30 on Zoom

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ABSTRACT

Despite large improvements toward gender equality in the workplace in the late 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, the gender wage gap has stalled over the last decade. The share of women in high-paying jobs remains low. Using payroll data on all employees from a large French firm in the manufacturing sector over 2013-2021, we study gender career patterns of high and low-skilled white collars. We find that the gender wage gap in the firm is due to different assignment of men and women in hierarchical levels. We identify a gender gap in promotion over the period and we investigate how it is shaped by the internal job posting of the firm. We do not find any difference in the probability to apply to a promotion between men and women. Conditionally of applying and using job fixed effects, a female candidate has a higher chance to be recruited than a male candidate. The effect is driven male managers being more likely to hire a female candidate while female managers hire men and women equally. However, the structure of the internal job market tends to favor men as men tend to apply on job with a lower number of candidates. Our study highlights the importance of studying both the behaviors of employees and managers on the internal job posting, and the structure of the job market for the study of the gender promotion gap.