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Gender Career Gap and Firm Composition

Project description

Gender inequality in power positions

Many women seeking to progress in their careers often find that breaking through the glass ceiling is all but impossible. This results in a striking gender gap in leadership positions across the corporate, academic, and political worlds, further hindering future progress towards equality. Career divergence between genders represents one of the priorities of the EU’s new Strategic Agenda 2019-2024. The EU-funded GENCARGAP project will study the role gender composition plays within companies and professions, using high-level administrative data and a reliable empirical design. Its purpose is to estimate how the distribution of women across firms’ hierarchy affects the gender career gap. It will also examine the potential effectiveness of policies aimed to reduce gender inequality within the workplace.

Objective

As careers progress women tend to lag behind their male peers. This career divergence results in the underrepresentation of women in positions of power, which is bound to bear an important cost to individuals, firms, and society. It is likely to be linked with a misallocation of talent, make the glass ceiling more impenetrable, and hinder future progress towards equality. The focus of this project is on the role of gender composition within firms and occupations on the career divergence of men and women. Relying on high quality administrative data and a credible empirical design, I will estimate how the share of women in a firm affects the gender career gap. Then employing structural estimation approach, I will test the effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing gender imbalances within the workplace, such as quotas or equal opportunity policy. Finally, I will conduct a comparative analysis across European countries to test the external validity of the findings and to draw lessons on the role of institutional environment and how it interacts with different employment policies. The question I address speaks directly to an ongoing global political and economic debate. Advancement towards gender equality is currently one of the priorities of the new Strategic Agenda of the EU. The approach I take is novel and the results have a potential to shed light on the underlying causes of workplace gender imbalances. Finally, the cross-country comparative analysis will add to the relevance of this proposal in a European perspective. The community of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona School of Economics and the supervision by Professor González constitute the perfect environment to conduct this project. The main factors being the outstanding research conditions, the strong affinity of research interests and agenda with the Supervisor, and the presence of a high number of experts with complementary knowledge and skills, which will lead to two-way knowledge transfer.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 172 932,48
Address
PLACA DE LA MERCE, 10-12
08002 Barcelona
Spain

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 172 932,48
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