New Perspectives on Gender

Abstract

Psychological and socio-psychological factors are now more commonly discussed as possible explanations for gender differences in labor market outcomes. We first describe the (mainly) laboratory-based evidence regarding gender differences in risk preferences, in attitudes towards competition, in the strength of other-regarding preferences, and in attitudes towards negotiation. We then review the research that has tried to quantify the relevance of these factors in explaining gender differences in labor market outcomes outside of the laboratory setting. We also describe recent research on the relationship between social and gender identity norms and women’s labor market choices and outcomes, as well as on the role of child-rearing practices in explaining gender identity norms. Finally, we report on some recent work documenting puzzling trends in women’s well-being and discuss possible explanations for these trends, including identity considerations. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Introduction

At the time Altonji and Blank completed their influential Handbook chapter in 1999, the two main factors being discussed as sources of the gender gap in earnings were differences in human capital accumulation and discrimination (taste-based or statistical). Patterns of occupational segregation by gender (which have been shown to “explain” much of the gender gap in earnings) were essentially attributed either to discrimination being more pronounced in some occupations than others, or to differences in human capital accumulation pre labor market entry (such as differences in the type of education women receive) or post labor market entry (such as differences in accumulated experience).

While researchers have certainly not abandoned studying these two factors nor given up on their first order relevance, a major development over the last ten years has been the rising popularity of new classes of explanations for gender differences in labor market outcomes.¹ First and foremost is the possibility that there are important differences in psychological attributes and preferences between men and women that may make some occupations more attractive to women and others more attractive to men. While Altonji and Blank (1999) already discuss this possibility, they also point to the difficulty in pushing it further without better foundations for the source and nature of these gender differences. Thanks to advances in the psychology and experimental literatures, and a growing influence of these literatures on economics research, we now have a much more concrete sense of the psychological factors that appear to systematically differ between men and women. In particular, we review the evidence regarding gender differences in risk preferences (Section 2.1), in attitudes towards competition (Section 2.2), in the strength of other-regarding preferences (Section 2.3) and in attitudes towards negotiation (Section 2.4). While there is an abundance of laboratory studies regarding each of these psychological factors, there has been to date, as we discuss in Sections 2.5 and 2.6, only a very limited amount of research able to establish the relevance of these factors for labor market outcomes. In this regard, whether this body of psychological research will be more than just a decade-long fad and have a long-lasting impact on how labor economists think about gender differences will crucially depend on further demonstration of its economic significance in real markets. Assuming such economic significance can be established, policymakers will want to better understand the sources of these gender differences in psychological attributes and traits: are evolution and biology dictating that women are more risk averse than men? Or is the gender gap in risk aversion an outcome of child-rearing practices? The review we perform in Section 2.7 suggest at least some environmental influences on top of pure biological foundations, and hence the promise of a broader set of policy tools to try to undo some of the psychological influences that might be the most damaging to women’s labor market success.

Another increasingly discussed explanation for why women and men experience different labor markets is the existence of social norms about what is appropriate for men to do and what is appropriate for women to do. Influential papers by Akerlof and Kranton (2000, 2002, 2005) have helped the import into economics of earlier insights from the social psychology literature regarding an individual’s social identity and how it can influence behaviors and choices in markets. One of the richest applications of the social identity model has been to gender identity and its implications for not only occupational sorting, but also labor force participation and the allocation of work within the household. We review the (gender) identity model in Section 3.1. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to design a credible causal testing of the impact of gender identity norms for women’s labor market choices; we review the evidence that has been produced so far in Section 3.2. Here again, we feel that much more validating empirical work will be needed in the near future for gender identity insights to have a long-lasting impact on how labor economists approach gender issues. The review we perform in Section 3.3 shows that socialization and child-rearing practices have been singled out (in the economics literature at least) as the key drivers of social norms regarding gender roles; in fact, as we discuss in Section 3.4, a nurture explanation for why men and women exhibit different attitudes with respect to risk (or competition, or negotiation, or altruism) might be that such gendered traits are components of one’s gender identity (e.g. being a woman implies displaying more risk-aversion; being a man implies behaving more aggressively).

Section 4 continues on the theme of bringing a more psychological perspective into the labor economics of gender. In that section, we review some recent work on gender differences in well-being. We are particularly motivated by a recent paper by Stevenson and Wolfers (2009) who find that, despite decades of educational gains and an unambiguous enlargement of their set of labor market opportunities, women’s self-reported levels of life satisfaction appear to have declined over time, both in absolute terms and relative to men’s. We discuss various explanations for this finding. More generally, we stress in this section that additional measures of women’s well-being exist beyond those typically used by labor economists (see for example Blau, 1998), and that a creative use of those measures could lead to a richer perspective on women’s progress.

We conclude in Section 5 with additional suggestions for future research.