City Research Online

Abstract

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain, we find a robust association between the share of female managers in the workplace and the size of the gender wage gap. In workplace fixed-effects estimates, the gap is eradicated when more than 60 per cent of workplace managers are women, a scenario that obtains in around one fifth of all workplaces. The association between the share of female managers and the gender wage gap is more pronounced when workplace managers set pay at the workplace, and where employees are paid for performance. These findings are consistent with the proposition that women are more likely to be paid equitably when managers have discretion in the way they set pay or reward performance and those managers are women. They suggest that a stronger presence of women in managerial positions can help tackle the gender wage gap.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	gender wage gap; female managers; performance pay
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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