Brown Bag: Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance
| When: | Thursday, 03 October 2024 - Thursday, 03 October 2024 |
| Where: | Braamfontein Campus West New Commerce Building (NCB), Room 221 |
| Start time: | 13:00 |
| Enquiries: |
SEF invites you to a Brown Bag presentation by Prof. Adeola Oyenubi on "Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance"
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Economic crisis and country-level heterogeneity in gender gaps in firm performance: Does pre-existing inequality matter?
Abstract
Nascent literature on gender gap has revealed that individual level gender gap is heterogeneous such that it is possible to identify individual characteristics that are associated with very large, as well as very small (or even reversed) gender gaps. I apply similar logic to gender gaps at the firm level using the most comprehensive cross-country data on informal enterprises in urban developing contexts. First, using a model with interaction model, I explore the relationship between pre-pandemic country-level gender-related inequality (measured by the UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index (GII)) and the gender gap in labour productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is based on the conjecture that COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates existing inequalities. Second, I generalize the interaction model using the Sorted Effects analysis which provides a complete mapping of heterogeneity in firm-level gender productivity gap by ordering the full distribution of the partial effects from largest to smallest with respect to the underlying characteristics of the population of interest.
Results show a robust positive relationship between pre-pandemic GII and lower productivity during the pandemic. Specifically, female-owned informal enterprises in less egalitarian (or high GII) countries experienced larger gender gap in labour productivity during the pandemic than their counterparts in more egalitarian countries. Further, I present evidence that show that (similar to individual level gender gaps) firm-level gender gaps are heterogeneous. Particularly, the largest gender gaps are found amongst female-owned firms in Bangladesh.
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