Tackling the Global Profitarchy : Gender and the Choice of Business Sector
Sectoral segregation is often used to explain a large part of a well-documented gender earnings gap in business profits. Women tend to sort into different sectors than men, and the sectors dominated by women tend to be less profitable. This paper i...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/734371558715932769/Tackling-the-Global-Profitarchy-Gender-and-the-Choice-of-Business-Sector http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31747 |
| Summary: | Sectoral segregation is often used to
explain a large part of a well-documented gender earnings
gap in business profits. Women tend to sort into different
sectors than men, and the sectors dominated by women tend to
be less profitable. This paper investigates the horizonal
dimension of sectoral segregation by studying global data on
female and male enterprises operating in sectors that are
typically dominated by the same and opposite sex. The
analysis uses the novel Future of Business dataset, which
spans 97 countries and was administered to enterprise
owners, managers, and employees who use Facebook. The
analysis finds that some of the earnings gap can indeed be
explained by sector choice: female-owned businesses in
male-dominated sectors make significantly higher profits
than those in traditionally female sectors. The evidence
points to a hierarchy of earnings, with male-owned
businesses in male-dominated sectors earning the most, women
in male-dominated sectors and men in female-concentrated
sectors in the middle tier, and women in female-concentrated
sectors at the bottom. Correlational analysis suggests that
women who own businesses in male-dominated sectors are
younger, married, and more likely to have inherited the
business than women in female-concentrated sectors. They
have similar education to women in female-concentrated
sectors and present higher self-efficacy but lower
entrepreneurial identity and commitment to the sector. Male
support networks appear to be key for female-owned firms,
with co-ownership with husbands and male role models
factoring into the decision to cross over. |
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