Essays On Gender And Careers

My dissertation examines the male-favoring disparities in career outcomes that persist. I use the mutual fund industry as the context for my research, as an abundance of data on individuals, funds, and firms allows me to trace the careers of mutual fund managers as they move across funds and firms. In Chapter 2, I explore whether gender affects the prices that employers charge for work performed by their employees. I hypothesize that because work performed by women is viewed as less valuable than work performed by men, employers will charge lower prices to customers for work performed by female employees than for equivalent work performed by male employees. Results indicate that while there are no gender differences in prices when men and women are first hired into a position, the prices that employers charge for female employees’ work decrease over the course of employees’ tenure in a job position relative to the prices employers charge for the work of male employees with equal performance and tenure. In Chapter 3, I examine whether gender disparities in advancement differ depending on whether men and women advance through internal mobility or through external mobility. I find that, contrary to expectations, there are no aggregate gender disparities in advancement for both internal mobility and external mobility. However, I find evidence that the relationship between performance and external advancement varies by gender, as women experience decreasing returns to increased performance relative to men over the lower half of the performance spectrum. Overall, these studies increase our understanding of when and how gender affects individuals’ careers.