This dissertation is a collection of three empirical essays on Albania and Iran. In December of 1990, the communist system in Albania came to an abrupt end. The collapse of communism led to a number of macroeconomic reforms that, among other things, brought dramatic changes in the Albanian labor market. This study uses data from the first nationally representative household survey to examine one outcome of a decade-long transition in Albania, the earnings gap between men and women. The average gender earnings gap is calculated at 31 percent, but it is found to be as high as 50 percent in the upper parts of the distribution. The traditional Oaxaca-Blinder method and a recent method that combines quantile regression with the bootstrap are applied to decompose the gender gap into a portion attributable to differences in characteristics and a portion explained by returns to characteristics. Results show that differences in human capital characteristics do not explain any of the existing gap. Furthermore, a large proportion of the gap can be attributed to segregation in occupations and industries. Simulations of female counterfactual wages show that the gender gap is significantly reduced for the entire distribution, and disappears in the higher quantiles of the distribution when occupation and industry are controlled for. The next two essays analyze welfare and female labor force participation in post-Revolution Iran. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 and a number of subsequent macro shocks dealt a huge blow to Iran's economy. In this paper we ask the question of how families and individuals have fared through these tumultuous times. Conventional measures of change in welfare, such as average consumption or GDP per capita, do not accurately reflect the experience of individual cohorts. We utilize annual surveys of expenditures and income conducted between 1984 and 2004 and decompose changes in average earnings and expenditures into cohort, age, and period effects. The estimated period effects accurately reflect the fluctuations in the economy noticeable in the macro data, and the life cycle earnings and expenditures profiles show a typical inverted U-shape. The cohort effects, which compare the position of life cycle profiles of different cohorts, and are of most interest to us, show a rising trend for cohorts born before the 1950s (about 30 years or older at the time of the Revolution). They also indicate that younger cohorts, those born after 1965 and therefore entered adult life after the Revolution, seem to have lost out. We discuss possible reasons for the asymmetrical lifetime experience of the two sets of cohorts. We believe that the disruptions caused by the Revolution itself and the subsequent eight year war with Iraq (1980-88) may have caused lifetime losses for the cohorts who came of age in the early 1980s. The purpose of the third essay is to understand changes in the labor force participation rate of women in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Studies consistently show that like other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Iran has experienced only a modest improvement in female labor force participation rates, despite having gone through the fertility transition and significant improvements in education of women. Utilizing 21 consecutive household surveys from 1984-2004, we decompose changes in the participation rate into age, cohort, and period effects. We find some evidence that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 did indeed have a negative impact on the cohorts that were in their teens or early 20s at that time. However, viewed from a cohort perspective, the evidence shows that women born after 1965 have continuously increased their participation. This is in contrast to the evidence that has been observed by others who have compared cross-section averages over time. / Ph. D.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / In all parts of the Global South, female farmers face challenges to access productive resources and output markets in an equal manner as male farmers, which is referred to as the gender gap in agriculture. In Ghana, where cocoa is one of the major cash crops, these systematic disadvantages mean that female small-scale cocoa farmers face challenges to equally benefit from cultivating the cash crop. Even though there is agreement among researchers that quantitative differences in access to assets result from underlying social gender norms and intra-household inequalities in bargaining power, there is a research gap as to how these underlying causes affect female small-scale cocoa farmer’s agency and empowerment in private and public spheres.

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.

Women today are still highly outnumbered by men in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This study analyzes the relationship between girls’ gender role attitudes in adolescence and their likelihood of working in a STEM occupation between the ages of 25 and 30 years old. My paper focuses on how conservative gender role attitudes, with men thought of as the breadwinners and women as the homemakers, may negatively affect a woman’s likelihood of holding a STEM career. I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to analyze both a strict definition of STEM as well as a broader one that includes related professions in the social sciences and teaching. Via a regression approach, I hold constant other adolescent attributes to find a direct, negative relationship between adolescent girls with conservative gender role attitudes and future STEM careers. I find that for strict STEM careers, women are .46 percentage points less likely than men to work in STEM between the ages of 25 and 30 years old with statistical significance at the 1% level. Creating an interaction variable for conservative gender role attitudes and female, I distinguish by gender to find an additional improbability of holding a STEM job for conservative women. Conservative women are .32 percentage points less likely work in a STEM job between the ages of 25 and 30 years old with statistical significance at the 5% level. Helping to explain the gender gap in STEM, my results show that adolescent girls with conservative gender role attitudes are much less likely than boys to work in a STEM career.

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.