Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP4307
Authors: Ghazala Azmat; Maia Gell; Alan Manning
Abstract: There is an enormous literature on gender gaps in pay and labour market participation but virtually no literature on gender gaps in unemployment rates. Although there are some countries in which there is essentially no gender gap in unemployment, there are others in which the female unemployment rate is substantially above the male. Although it is easy to give plausible reasons for why more women than men may decide not to want work, it is not so obvious why, once they have decided they want a job, women in some countries are less likely to be in employment than men. This is the subject of this Paper.We show that, in countries where there is a large gender gap in unemployment rates, there is a gender gap in both flows from employment into unemployment and from unemployment into employment. We investigate different hypotheses about the sources of these gaps. Most hypotheses find little support in the data and the gender gap in unemployment rates (like the gender gap in pay) remains largely unexplained. But it does seem to correlate with attitudes on whether men are more deserving of work than women so that discrimination against women may explain part of the gender gap in unemployment rates in the Mediterranean countries.
Keywords: gender gap; unemployment rates
JEL Codes: J16; J64
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| discriminatory attitudes (J71) | higher unemployment rates for women (J79) |
| domestic responsibilities (D13) | transition from employment to inactivity (J26) |
| gender-biased attitudes (J16) | unemployment rates (J64) |
| gender gap in unemployment (J79) | transition from employment to unemployment (J63) |
| gender gap in unemployment (J79) | transition from unemployment to employment (J68) |