This study investigates the relationship between population density and pension income as well as the Gender Pension Gap in Swedish municipalities between 2011 and 2019. Despite Sweden’s reputation as one of the most gender-equal countries, the country’s Gender Pension Gap persists and surpasses the OECD average. Additionally, the Urban Wage Premium adds another dimension to the drift in pension depending on the choice of residence. Using panel data fixed effects, our empirical findings show that both men and women benefit from a higher population density in terms of higher pension income while suggesting a reduction in the Gender Pension Gap in more dense areas. The robustness of the fixed effects model results is confirmed through various models, including the consideration of an alternative main independent variable, the exclusion of time dummies, and the inclusion of additional control variables. Our research contributes to labour economics, urban economics, and sociology regarding gender equality.

With the increasing feminization of the legal profession in the United States over the last half century, past research has documented the prevalence and transformation of gender inequality in law firms. However, relatively little is known about gender inequality in small, conservative legal markets like Utah. This thesis examines data from the 2008-2009 Utah Attorney Advancement and Retention Survey. The analyses indicate that relative to their male colleagues, women earned less in 2007 and are less likely to procure higher quality job assignments than their peers. The most promising explanations for these disparities include employment sector, gender and motherhood statuses, and year of bar admittance. Contrary to the results of past work, analyses find little or no effect for several traditional predictors of gender gaps including marital status, mentoring, tokenism, firm size, and hours billed. Open-ended responses reveal that while overt discrimination exists to some degree in Utah firms, most inequitable treatment has taken on subtle forms such as exclusion from the "good old boys" network, perpetuation of traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and differential opportunity paths and structures.

Thesis advisor: Philip E. Strahan / The essays on the gender gap in entrepreneurship examine the trade-offs between women's family formation choices and career aspirations in the setting of small businesses and entrepreneurship. The first essay titled ``Family Comes First: Reproductive Health and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship,'' uses Census data to show how better access to reproductive care increases women's propensity to become entrepreneurs, correlates positively with female entrepreneurial activity, and negatively with female entrepreneurial age. Examining firm size and personal income suggests it also improves the success of female-led businesses. Finally, it shows how policies securing better reproductive care enable more women to become entrepreneurs and, potentially, drive economic growth. The second essay titled ``Reproductive Rights and Women's Access to Capital,'' explores the impact of reproductive care restrictions on female entrepreneurs seeking to raise capital. It tests the hypothesis that better access to reproductive care enables women to plan their family formation better, avoid unexpected pregnancies, and gain access to cheaper capital as a result of this reduced risk. This hypothesis is analyzed using restricted data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in a difference-in-differences setting around the enactment of state-level legislation limiting access to reproductive care. It finds restrictions on reproductive care to be detrimental to women seeking to raise capital and open their own firms. Women who have limited reproductive care access are less likely to borrow, end up taking smaller loan amounts, and have lower leverage ratios. The main contribution of the first essay is that it establishes a direction and causal relationship between reproductive care and entrepreneurship, and of the second essay is that it shows how the increased risk of unplanned pregnancy translates into reduced credit availability for female entrepreneurs at childbearing age. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Changes within and outside of agricultural education were analyzed between 2009-2014 which coincided with a reduction of male pre-service agricultural teachers. Under the lens of the Theory of Gender Re-alignment, special attention was given to changes in legislation, curriculum, recruitment, and economic factors which relate to structural and cultural changes within agricultural education. The Changes identified in this study explain why male students are being outperformed by female students at a two to one ratio in regards to agricultural education degrees obtained.

This paper investigates the effect of culture and home country self-employment rates on immigrant self-employment in the United States, post-migration. This study analyzes the effects for both men and women, focusing on the gender gap in self-employment. The empirical results show that home country effects have a small impact on self-employment, but most of this relationship is unexplained. Because the explanatory power of home country effects is so low, it is unlikely that culture significantly influences self-employment. I find that, contrary to my hypotheses, women from countries with high female self-employment rates are likely to see a larger decrease in self-employment than their male counterparts or women from countries with lower self-employment rates. The gender gap in self-employment increases in the U.S. because self-employment declines more for women than men. However, I do find that men from countries with high male self-employment will also see a larger decline in self-employment than men from other countries. Thus, I reject the home country self-employment hypothesis with regards to women and men. I find some evidence that immigrant self-employment rates are more related to stage of economic development in the host country than culture in the home country.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not having a laptop computer for individual use 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week lessens differences between how eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys in 10 middle schools in HenricoCounty, Virginia perceive computer use and computer technology. Having a laptop computer to use at any time of the day or night eliminates the issue of competition between boys and girls for computer use. It also eliminates the need for either girls or boys to perform in front of other students while learning, thus lessening to some degree, feelings of computer anxiety. Competition for computer access and computer anxiety are two theories that have been offered to explain why many young women in previous studies have chosen not to use computers to the same extent that young men do, as well as why many young women generally do not consider computer-related careers as career options in their futures. A modified Computer Attitude Questionnaire, based upon the CAQ, Version 5.14 was used to survey eighth grade girls and boys in 10 Henrico County middle schools. Data collected from the surveys were analyzed using the statistical package, SPSS 14 for Windows. Comparisons were based on gender and on the self-reported race/ethnicity of the participants. A comparison of attitudes related to the number of computers already in the home in addition to the school-issued laptop was also conducted. A variety of statistical analyses were used in order to determine differences in attitudes between the boys and girls surveyed and the interactions between the attitudes of the respondents and their race/ethnicity. This was a non-experimental, quantitative, comparative research study.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / Women represent approximately 50 percent of the active labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even though women are involved in a variety of agricultural activities, they have limited access to resources and have restricted decision-making power compared to their male counterparts (FAO, 2011). These limitations and restrictions are likely to have a significant effect on women’s performance levels compared to men. The present research measures the gender-based performance differences, identifies factors that influence the financial performance levels, and factors contributing to generate disparities between male and female smallholders performance in northern Ghana. Data used in this study are from the Agriculture Production Survey (APS) focusing on the 2013-2014 cropping season. The study uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to measure and decompose the gender performance gap in two parts: endowment effect and structural effect. Gross margin is used to measure farmer’s financial performance. The endowment effect is attributed to differences in the explanatory variables, and the structural effect is associated with differences in returns of the explanatory variables. Results from the study indicate there is a gender gap between male and female smallholder farmers with male farmers outperforming females by 46 percent. Land area had the largest significant impact on the explained part of the gender gap, followed by tractor service. The endowment effect portion of the decomposition models is accounted for 35 percent of the gender gap, and the remaining 65 percent is associated with the structural effect. The larger structural effect part suggests that developing programs to establish equality among male and female smallholder producers in terms of access to resources will not close the gender gap. Additionally, factors contributing positively overall to gross margin of smallholder farmers were land area, and tractor services and crops produced. Based on the results of this research, policymakers and agribusiness stakeholders may look to reduce the gender gap existing between smallholder farmers in northern Ghana by empowering women by providing them access to land area and tractor services. Further research into factors affecting the gender gap in financial performance in agricultural activities is warranted.

Essa tese de doutorado tem como objetivo estudar o diferencial de gênero no tempo de commuting dos indivíduos e entender sua relação com a Hipótese da Responsabilidade Doméstica (HRH, em inglês). Em um primeiro momento busca-se identificar as diferenças no comportamento de viagens a trabalho de homens e mulheres e associá-las à HRH, ao passo que a segunda parte vai mais a fundo na questão da divisão de tarefas e analisa o papel das normas sociais como motor do diferencial de gênero no tempo de commuting. Lançando mão de informações provenientes da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) de 2011 a 2015 para indivíduos casados, a primeira parte constrói uma métrica para o grau de responsabilização do cônjuge com os afazeres domésticos e investiga a sua importância na determinação do tempo de commuting. Os principais resultados indicam que gênero só se apresenta como característica relevante para explicar a duração do deslocamento ao trabalho nos cenários em que a parcela desempenhada de afazeres domésticos não é levada em consideração. Testes de robustez mostram que o efeito da HRH sobrevive mesmo quando incluídos nas regressões aspectos do mercado de trabalho que tradicionalmente são apontados como explicações para homens e mulheres apresentarem diferentes durações do commuting. Reconhecendo que a divisão de afazeres domésticos é influenciada pelos papéis de gênero que cada cônjuge assume dentro de um casamento, a segunda parte utiliza dados do Censo Brasileiro de 2010 para incluir na análise casais do mesmo sexo e entender como as normas sociais podem ser responsáveis pelas diferentes durações no trajeto casa-trabalho de homens e mulheres. Os resultados revelam que casais do mesmo sexo apresentam maior probabilidade de terem o mesmo tempo de commuting e que mulheres que se relacionam com outras mulheres conseguem ter maior mobilidade no espaço urbano, trazendo evidências de que o afrouxamento das normas sociais, materializado na não-designação tradicional de papéis sociais de gênero em um casamento, tem efeitos positivos sobre a igualdade do commuting. A pesquisa aqui desenvolvida expande a fronteira do conhecimento em várias frentes, a começar por trazer a discussão para fora do eixo dos países desenvolvidos. Mais importante ainda, discute o desenrolar da HRH no que diz respeito à capacidade de se locomover no espaço em busca de melhores oportunidades de emprego. Finalmente, a pesquisa ainda traz insights sobre a diferença entre gênero e papéis de gênero como condicionantes do comportamento de viagem dos indivíduos, permitindo que políticas públicas sejam desenhadas visando mitigar os efeitos adversos da HRH para as mulheres. / This dissertation deals with the gender differential in the commuting time of individuals and aims to understand its relationship with the Household Responsibility Hypothesis (HRH). First, it seeks to identify the differences in the behavior of travel to work for men and women and to associate them with HRH. The second part explores the issue of the division of household chores and analyzes the role of social norms as the motor of the gender differential in commuting time. Using information from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) from 2011 to 2015 for married individuals, the first part constructs a metric for the degree of accountability of the spouse to household chores and investigates their importance in determining commuting time. The main results indicate that gender is a relevant characteristic only to explain travel time to work in the scenarios in which the portion of household chores performed is not taken into account. Moreover, robustness tests show that the HRH effect persists even when aspects of the labor market that are traditionally pointed out as explanations for men and women presenting different durations of commuting are included in the regressions. Acknowledging that household chores are influenced by the gender roles each spouse takes in a marriage, the second part uses data from the 2010 Brazilian Census to include same-sex couples in the analysis to understand how social norms can account for different commuting times for men and women. The results show that same-sex couples are more likely to have the same commuting time and that women who relate to other women are able to have greater mobility in the urban space, bringing evidence that the loosening of social norms, materialized by the non-designation of traditional gender roles in a marriage, has positive effects on commuting equality. The research developed here pushes the boundary of knowledge on several fronts, starting with exploring the issue out of the usual circuit of developed countries. More importantly, it discusses the development of HRH with regard to the ability to move around in space in search of better employment opportunities. Finally, the research brings insights into the difference between gender and gender roles as constraints on individuals\' travel behavior, enabling the design of public policies to mitigate the adverse effects of HRH for women.

Cette thèse étudie l’impact des normes de genre et des institutions sur les choix éducatifs, les décisions d’offre de travail et les préférences politiques. Dans le premier chapitre, nous nous intéressons à l’influence du genre des enfants sur les opinions de leurs pères en matière de droits des femmes. Nous montrons que la présence d’au moins une fille parmi les enfants est associée à des attitudes plus marquées contre l’avortement pour les pères de droite et inversement, plus favorables à l’avortement pour les pères de gauche. Nous développons un modèle théorique dans lequel les pères, qui ont des préférences paternalistes, ont tendance à adopter des positions politiques plus extrêmes lorsqu’ils ont une fille plutôt qu’un garçon. La partie empirique de l’analyse repose sur l’utilisation de deux nouvelles sources de données : une base biographique des députés français, et une enquête post-électorale au niveau européen. Nos résultats suggèrent que les filles polarisent les attitudes de leur père en matière de droit à l’avortement. Ces résultats réconcilient en partie les conclusions contradictoires des travaux récents sur l’influence des filles sur les opinions politiques de leurs pères. Le deuxième chapitre est issu d’un travail commun avec E. Duchini. Nous étudions les décisions d’offre de travail des femmes dans un contexte institutionnel qui limitait jusqu’à récemment leur capacité à bénéficier d’un emploi du temps régulier. Historiquement en France, les enfants en âge d’aller à l’école maternelle et primaire n’avaient pas classe le mercredi. Nous utilisons la réforme dites des rythmes scolaires comme « expérience naturelle ». Avant 2013, les femmes dont le plus jeune enfant était en âge d’aller à l’école élémentaire étaient deux fois plus nombreuses que les hommes à ne pas travailler le mercredi. Afin de mesurer la réaction de l’offre de travail des mères à la réforme, nous utilisons la variation de son application dans le temps et en fonction de l’âge du plus jeune enfant. Nos résultats montrent que la réforme a permis à un plus grand nombre de femmes de travailler le mercredi, entraînant, en moins de deux ans, une réduction d’un tiers de leur différentiel de participation ce jour de la semaine par rapport aux femmes du groupe de contrôle. Cet effet est essentiellement attribuable aux mères pour qui une présence régulière au travail est particulièrement profitable, comme celles qui travaillent à des postes d’encadrement. Le troisième chapitre présente les résultats d’une expérimentation avec assignation aléatoire conduite de septembre 2015 à février 2016 avec T. Breda, J. Grenet et M. Monnet. Cette expérimentation montre que l’intervention courte d’un modèle positif d’identification féminin (role model) peut influencer les attitudes des apprenants, et contribuer ensuite à modifier leur choix d’orientation. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons des éléments descriptifs sur les attitudes différenciées des filles et des garçons vis-à-vis des sciences, et sur l’importance des stéréotypes vis-à-vis des femmes dans les sciences chez les lycéens. A l’aide d’une assignation aléatoire des élèves dans un groupe traité et dans un groupe contrôle, nous étudions l’impact causal des modèles positifs d’identification sur les aspirations, les attitudes et les choix éducatifs. Ces modèles féminins extérieurs font baisser de manière significative la prévalence des visions stéréotypées associées aux métiers dans les sciences, tant chez les élèves filles que garçons. Le traitement n’a pas d’effet significatif sur le choix d’orientation des élèves de seconde, mais la proportion de filles qui s’orientent et sont admises en classe préparatoire scientifique après le lycée augmente de 3 points de pourcentage. Cet effet correspond à une augmentation de 30% par rapport à la moyenne du groupe de contrôle. Ces changements sont principalement attribuables aux élèves ayant les meilleurs résultats scolaires en mathématiques. / This dissertation examines the role of gender norms and institutions on human capital formation, labor supply, and political preferences. In the first chapter, I use both theoretical and empirical analysis to study the impact of offspring’s gender on their parental political beliefs toward gender issues. I examine the hypothesis that men’s political attitudes toward abortion do respond to the presence of a daughter, but differently according to their general political beliefs. This polarization effect of daughters means that the presence of a daughter is associated with more anti-abortion (respectively pro-abortion) views for right-wing (respectively left-wing) fathers. This argument is investigated in a simple economic model and its implications are studied empirically using two original datasets. The model predicts that fathers with paternalistic preferences adopt more extreme political positions when they have a daughter than when they have a son. The empirical investigation provides evidence of a polarization effect of daughters on fathers’ views on abortion. The magnitude of the effect corresponds to around 30% of the impact of right-wing political affiliation on abortion support. In the second chapter, together with E. Duchini, we investigate women’s employment decisions when institutions limit their chances of having a regular working schedule. We use a recent reform as a natural experiment to show that women do value flexibility when their children demand it. Before 2013, women whose youngest child was of primary school age were twice as likely as men not to work on Wednesdays. To measure mothers’ response, we exploit variations in the implementation of this policy over time and across the age of the youngest child. Our results show that, although mothers take advantage of the reform to close 1/3 of their initial gap in the probability of working on Wednesday with respect to the control group. This response seems to be driven by mothers who are more rewarded for a regular presence at work, such as those working in managerial positions. The third chapter reports the results of a large-scale randomized experiment showing that a light-touch, in-class intervention of external female role models, can influence students’ attitudes and contribute to a significant change in their choice of field of study. While the impact of peers and "horizontal exposure" on aspirations gained greater attention in the recent literature, surprisingly little is known about the impact of exposure to role models on students’ attitudes and schooling decisions. Together with T. Breda, J. Grenet and M. Monnet, we implemented and monitored a large-scale experiment in randomly selected high-school classes in France from September 2015 to February 2016. We first document gender differences in attitudes toward science, as well as the prevalence of stereotypical opinions with respect to women in science among high school students. Using random assignment of students to a one-hour intervention, we investigate the causal impact of role models on aspirations, attitudes, and educational investment. External female role models significantly reduce the prevalence of stereotypes associated to jobs in science, both for female and male students. Using exhaustive administrative data, we do not find significant effect of the treatment on the choices of year 10-students, but we show that the proportion of female students enrolled in selective science programs after high school graduation increases by 3 percentage points, which corresponds to a 30 percent-increase with respect to the baseline mean. These effects are essentially driven by high-achieving students.

This interdisciplinary study examines the issue of education in presidential election campaigns from 1968 through 2012. Historians of education have argued that the public's embrace of The National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (ANAR), in 1983 forced education onto the national agenda because political elites had to respond to voters' concerns about educational quality. Yet, historians of education have largely overlooked presidential election campaigns in their analysis of how education became a prominent political issue. In contrast, political scientists have focused a great deal on presidential election campaigns in seeking to understand the interaction between political elites and voters but have given little attention to the issue of education. This study integrates these two lines of inquiry to provide a better understanding of how education became a top-tier political issue and to better reveal the interactions between political elites and voters in that process. This study makes use of source materials that have received little scholarly examination. Internal campaign strategy documents reveal how political elites understood public opinion about education and how they sought to make use of that understanding to win elections. These underutilized sources reveal that historians have overemphasized the role of ANAR in the rise of education on the national political agenda. Long before education appeared in public opinion data as a top voter concern, strategists from both major political parties already wanted to push education onto the national political agenda. Yet, candidates were largely constrained from using education during the 1970s because they wanted to avoid engaging the controversial issue of de facto school desegregation. White voters were inconsistent on the issue: they claimed to support desegregation but took actions indicating they actually opposed desegregation. This made it difficult to craft an effective education message. When forced to discuss school desegregation, candidates of both parties employed a "quality education for all students" frame that deracialized the school desegregation debate and made education a safe issue to prime by the end of the decade. Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans used education for two electoral ends. First, they sought to use the recent transformation of the National Education Association (NEA) into a labor union and its endorsement of Democratic candidates to convince voters that the Democratic Party was beholden to radical special interest groups. Republican candidates also increased their priming of education in an attempt to close the gender gap arguing that women voters had a particular concern for the issue of education. Between 1990 and 2012, both parties wanted to use education to appeal to white voters. Republican candidates had long been committed to using education to soften their image. Now they began framing education as a civil rights issue in order to reassure white voters of their racial sensitivity. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates began framing education as an economic issue to reassure middle class white voters anxious about their children's future in the emerging global economy. A primary element in these electoral strategies was the idea that education was a "special" political issue. The "special" status rested on political elites' perceptions of voters' strong personal commitment to education and their nonpartisan attitudes toward specific policy positions. The lack of partisan correlation presented challenges for both parties but also unique opportunities to address campaign concerns related to a candidate's image, targeted voting blocs, and possible attacks on their opponents. The rise of the issue of education on the national agenda was often less about voters' concerns with educational quality and more about campaign strategy.