Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(1):38-59 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.499

The Effect of Female Managers on Gender Wage Differences

Veronika Hedija
Department of Economic Studies, College of Polytechnics, Jihlava, Czech Republic (veronika.hedija@vspj.cz).

The paper is devoted to gender wage differences; it especially focuses on the impact of the gender characteristics of the manager on gender wage disparity. Under the social identity theory, women in managerial positions, that can affect the wage of their subordinates, are likely to evaluate female employees better than male employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the gender characteristics of middle managers on the wages of directly subordinated rank-and-file employees using a variation within the firm. We have used two methods to consider the effect of the manager gender characteristics on subordinates: the estimation of the wage function and the average treatment effect on the treated, both supplemented by a matching procedure. We concluded that women in middle management in comparison to their male counterparts have a lower tendency to apply wage discrimination against women. The presence of a female head of department led to a decrease in the gender pay gap by almost 7 percentage points.

Keywords: wage differences, matching, labour market, gender pay gap, female managers, average treatment effect on the treated
JEL classification: J16, J24, J71

Published: January 1, 2015  Show citation

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Hedija, V. (2015). The Effect of Female Managers on Gender Wage Differences. Prague Economic Papers24(1), 38-59. doi: 10.18267/j.pep.499
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