Arbeitspapier

Gender Differences in Job Assignment and Promotion on a Complexity Ladder of Jobs

This paper studies gender differences in the allocation of workers across jobs of different complexity using panel data on Finnish metalworkers. These data provide a measure for the complexity of the workers' tasks that can be used to construct a complexity ladder of jobs. We study whether women have to meet higher productivity requirements than men in order to be assigned to more complex tasks. Gender differences in the promotion rates are examined. We use productivity measures that are based on the supervisors' performance evaluations and examine gender differences in the productivity of promoted and non-promoted workers. It is found that women start their careers in less complex tasks than men and that they are also less likely to get promoted than men who start in similar tasks. When we compare the productivity of men and women, both at the initial assignment and when some of these individuals have been promoted, we find that there is no gender-related productivity differential at the time of the initial assignment, but women become on average more productive than men afterwards, both in promoted and non-promoted subsets. The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women face a higher promotion threshold than men.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 1184

Classification
Wirtschaft
Subject
promotions
gender wage gap
discrimination
Erwerbsverlauf
Anforderungsprofil
Arbeitsproduktivität
Geschlecht
Lohndifferenzierung
Frauenerwerbstätigkeit
Schätzung
Finnland

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Vartiainen, Juhana
Pekkarinen, Tuomas
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
(where)
Bonn
(when)
2004

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.

Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Vartiainen, Juhana
  • Pekkarinen, Tuomas
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2004

Other Objects (12)