Work and Family
In this edition, we focus on how work and family conflicts lead to gender inequality in the professional spaces, creating systemic setbacks for women in their careers.
Women, for centuries, have taken up a majority share of care work in the home while balancing their careers - a trade off men rarely have to face. This often leads to women sacrificing high paying jobs and promotions causing a higher gender specific attrition in the workplace.
According to the McKinsey Women in Workplace Report 2021, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 86 women are promoted. As a result, men outnumber women significantly at the manager level, which means that there are far fewer women to promote to higher levels. This shows a larger systemic problem whose very foundations must be addressed to achieve equity.
This edition is inspired by Claudia Goldin’s book ‘Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity’ that breaks down decades of the author’s research about the barriers women face in balancing their career, professional lives and marriages - and what can be done to achieve gender equity, and further, couple equity in the household.
To learn more about Claudia Goldin’s work, her Richard T. Ely Lecture on ‘The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family’ gives great insight on the transitions in women's work in America that transformed the american economy as well as her books.
In a podcast with the Wall Street Journal here, the author talks about her book and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic towards how we look at work life balance, specifically for women. The burnout during the pandemic also increased more for women along with added pressure on working mothers to excel in their careers along with increased unpaid care work.
In this edition, we dive deep into various aspects of gender inequity in the workspace and homes, in careers and families - and how these problems can be addressed in the future.
As always, the newsletter contains job postings shared on our WhatsApp groups.
Happy Reading!
Best,
The Newsletter Team
Unequal distribution of labor between couples in home :
In this study, the authors estimate the effect of household appliance ownership on the labor force participation rate of married women using micro-level data from the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Censuses. It was found that Single women's labor force participation rates did not increase between 1960 and 1970. The authors found evidence in support of the hypothesis that the diffusion of household appliances contributed to the increase in married women's labor force participation rates during the 1960s.
This research aims to check whether the unequal involvement in household chores between men and women is associated with increased WFC (work-family conflict) in women and men, interpreting the results also from the knowledge that arises from gender studies. It was found that there is unequal involvement in household chores by women and men as it is higher in women than in men, and the perception of partner involvement is also lower in women. Secondly, those unequal involvements relate differently to men and women in different ways of work-family interaction.
This report attempts to analyze unpaid care work by sex and by socio-economic characteristics: geographical location (urban-rural), age groups, marital status, education level, activity status, employment status, income group, and presence and age of children in the household. It also attempts to analyze trends over time, as many countries have repeated their time-use surveys, sometimes for more than 5 decades.
In this research, the participants were asked to rate their level of agreement with working mothers and childcare and working fathers and household care. The results revealed that most participants wanted mothers to have the choice to work but considered childcare a limiting problem that (primarily) mothers should solve. Similarly, participants believed that working full-time did not excuse a husband from helping with chores, however, they did not express concerns with the term “helping” which implies that the husband would not hold any primary responsibility. Overall, the findings suggest the importance of educational and policymaking interventions and future research to highlight practices that support and encourage the role of men in addressing childcare and household needs.
Gender Pay Gap :
This paper examines the extent of gender wage gap and its determinants in the urban labor market in India. The study finds that women’s work is undervalued even in regular salaried jobs in India’s urban labor market and female workers are getting substantially lower wages than their male counterparts in almost all sectors and occupations, sub-categories despite controlling for differences in experience, education, geographical differences and other individual characteristics.
The paper ‘Mommy Track Divides : The Impact of Childbearing on Wages of Women of Differing Skill Levels’ explores how the wage and career consequences of motherhood differ by skill and timing. It appears that the lifetime costs of childbearing, especially early childbearing, are particularly high for skilled women.
‘Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors’ looks at the careers of MBAs from a top US business school to understand how career dynamics differ by gender. Although male and female MBAs have nearly identical earnings at the outset of their careers, their earnings soon diverge, with the male earnings advantage reaching almost 60 log points a decade after MBA completion.
‘A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter’ talks about how the gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.
Paternity Leave and Fertility :
‘The Effects of Paternity Leave on Fertility and Labor Market Outcomes’ studies effects of a father quota in the parental leave period on households’ labor market and fertility decisions using a regression discontinuity design. Results show that the reform substantially increased the take-up rate of fathers (by as much as 400%), as well as the re-employment probability of mothers shortly after childbirth (by about 11%).
Parental leave mandates are associated with high female employment rates, but with reductions in relative female wages if leave is of extended durations. If fathers were given longer periods of leave, would it shorten the career breaks of women? This paper analyzes the impact of family policies of Denmark and Sweden on women’s career breaks due to childbirth.
In ‘The Fatherhood Bonus and The Motherhood Penalty’, Michelle J. Budig, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, clarifies this debate by looking at the wage gap in terms of the one thing that the majority of adults experience in their lifetime—parenthood. In a new and provocative paper, Budig looks at fathers and mothers. For most men the fact of fatherhood results in a wage bonus; for most women motherhood results in a wage penalty.
‘The Impact of Paid Parental Leave on Fertility Intentions’ estimates the effect of access to paid parental leave on women's fertility intentions by exploiting the differential impact of the scheme for women working in the public and private sectors. This paper analyses the Australia's Paid Parental Leave scheme which was introduced in 2011 and provides 18 weeks of leave paid at the full-time minimum wage for the primary carer of a child.
Gender Equality Among Dual-Career Couples :
‘Working Time Preferences in Dual-Earning Households’ analyses actual and preferred household working times in paid employment and the preferred division of paid work between partners in dual-earning households in European Union countries and Norway, using representative Employment Options of the Future data (1998). The study focuses on working time preferences, which have so far received little attention in research.
‘Couples and Breadwinning in Low-Income Dual-Earner Households in India’ delves into gender and money among low income households in India. It analyses to what extent the incorporation of women into the labor market and their consequent economic contribution to family income affects a couple's relationships. A fairly representative sample of low income couples with at least ten years of marriage and at least two children was chosen. It brings out how it is the husband’s authority that is always in the forefront.
‘Gender equality within dual-earner and dual-career couples across different policy regimes and norm systems in Europe focuses on the division of housework among various couple earner types across different European welfare regimes in regard to work-family policies and gender norms.Through the empirical analysis it was found that the difference in men’s share of the housework across couple earner types decreases, but are not totally reduced, when controlling for the time availability indicator, relative resources, gender role attitude, family structure and country differences.
‘The Role of Working Women in Investment Decision Making in the Family in India’ discusses how when it comes to the investment decisions, women tend to be risk averse, have conservative attitude, lower levels of financial knowledge, lack of confidence and dependent on guidance from others as suggested by different researches worldwide. The role of husband becomes particularly important for women while choosing investment products or taking investment decisions. This article attempts to highlight the role of women in investment decision making in the family and further examines the role of a male spouse on the investment decisions.
Job and Internship Openings
Note: These are jobs shared by members over WhatsApp over the last 2 weeks. Please check if positions are still open before applying. If you are thinking about applying to one of these, you can also drop a message on the WhatsApp group or on the google group to connect with members currently working in these organisations.
Dweepobotee Brahma is hiring a full-time research associate to work on the intersection of Development Economics and Machine Learning in a project under Google India Research Award on child health in India. Details can be found here.
Samagra is hiring Senior Associates, Consultants and Senior Consultants. You can apply on our website directly by using this link.
IIM Ahmedabad is hiring Research Assistants ("pre-docs") at Centre for Management of Health Services. Details can be found here.
J-PAL South Asia is hiring a Senior Research Associate/Research Associate on their SEWA Wage Insurance Experiment. Details can be found here.
Yale-RISE is hiring a Research Manager to work to support the technical work at Y-RISE by providing insight and knowledge in research methods and statistical tools and managing large-scale impact evaluation projects. The details can be found here.
Internship Opportunities
J-PAL South Asia is hiring for Intern positions on the Hybrid Digital Learning Project. Details can be found here.
This newsletter was put together by Amruuta, Ridhi and Ria.
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