It's hard to find good evidence on whether voters have a gender bias. But the voting format used in French local elections makes it possible to estimate the extent of this form of discrimination, and suggests what we can do about it.

Read more about this paper recently presented at the 75th Economic Policy Panel meeting: Gender Discrimination in Politics. 

Does compulsory religious education make us more likely to believe as adults, and does it make us more ethical? Ludger Woessmann, Larissa Zierow, and Benjamin Arold explain to Tim Phillips what educational reform in Germany can tell us.

Compulsory religious education in school can have long-run consequences for students’ lives. Since the 1970s, German states at different times ended compulsory religious education in public schools and replaced it with a choice between ethics classes and religious education. This column shows that the reform not only led to reduced religiosity in students’ later life but also eroded traditional attitudes about gender roles and increased labour market participation and earnings.

Are preference differences between men and women attenuated or accentuated in more gender-equal societies? Using information on the shares of male and female Facebook users that are interested in over 45,000 different topics, this column finds that differences are larger in gender-equal societies for interests that are systematically biased towards the same gender across the globe (such as football, war, or children), while the opposite is true for interests that do not show a gender bias (such as fitness, travel, or horses). These contrasting results are consistent with both evolutionary psychology and social role theory.

Women are now more likely to pursue a university degree than men, but the proportion of women graduating in economics has decreased or remained stagnant over the past two decades. This column examines the representation of women in undergraduate economics degrees in 25 European countries during 2014–2018. The ratio of women to men in economics, controlling for gender differences in enrolment, has been around 0.6 on average and is stable or decreasing. Increased representation of women economists is important for more balanced policy recommendations, and the authors discuss how this might be achieved. 

As of June 2021, the US labour-force participation rate had not yet recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels. This column explores how much the aggregate decline in employment between 2020 and 2021 can be explained by excess job loss among parents, and particularly mothers, of young children, who have had to contend with school and daycare closures during the pandemic. The findings suggest that excessive employment declines among parents do not explain a sizeable share of ongoing job loss. A larger decline in employment for parents of young children was seen only among women without a bachelor’s degree.

While progress in closing gender gaps has been made, women around the world still earn less than men in the labour market. At the same time, income inequality across households has increased in recent decades. This column finds that the interaction of the marriage market and the labour market crucially impacts inequality across gender and within/between households. Policies that affect who marries whom (such as tax policies) or home production choices (such as parental leave or universal childcare) can mitigate or amplify inequality, calling for a better understanding of these spillovers across markets.

The rise in income inequality and, more prominently, in the wage gap between men and women has been one of the major concerns among policymakers and the public in recent years. This column presents new evidence from Germany on the impact of exports on the gender wage gap which shows that an increase in a plant’s exports significantly reduces the wage gap between male and female co-workers in white-collar occupations, but widens it for employees in blue-collar occupations. The findings suggest that designing policies that support women taking part in trade, especially in positions in which they would benefit from their comparative advantage, is crucial to maximise the potential benefits from globalisation.    

Despite a significant reduction in gender differences in the labour market over the last 40 years, they are still present in most advanced economies and do not appear likely to vanish soon. This column analyses the impact of culture, defined by women’s gender role attitudes, on maternal labour market decisions. It finds that social pressure is at least as strong as social learning in influencing labour market behaviour. Once these channels are accounted for, there is no direct effect of peers’ gender identity norms on labour force participation. Disseminating detailed statistics on female labour market outcomes and work attitudes may prove to be a cost-effective way to promote labour market participation, especially among less-educated mothers.