Working Paper: NBER ID: w26271
Authors: Conrad Miller; Jennifer Peck; Mehmet Seflek
Abstract: Where social norms favor gender segregation, firms may find it costly to employ both men and women. If the costs of integration are largely fixed, firms will integrate only if their expected number of female employees under integration exceeds some threshold. Motivated by a simple model of firm hiring, we develop a methodology that uses the distribution of female employment across firms to estimate the share of firms with binding integration costs and counterfactual female employment at all-male firms. We validate our approach using administrative data and unique policy variation from Saudi Arabia. We provide suggestive evidence that integration costs reduce aggregate female employment. Using survey data on manufacturing firms in 65 countries, we find significant integration costs in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia but not in other regions.
Keywords: gender segregation; female employment; integration costs; Saudi Arabia; Nitaqat policy
JEL Codes: J16; J23; J71; O53
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| integration costs (F15) | female employment (J21) |
| Nitaqat policy (J68) | female share of Saudi employment (J21) |
| binding integration costs (L14) | majority of Saudi firms employ only men (J79) |
| local preferences for gender segregation (J16) | integration costs (F15) |