Why are there so few women in executive positions? An analysis of gender differences in the life-cycle of executive employment

Anders Frederiksen () and Timothy Halliday

No 201502, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: "Glass ceilings" and "sticky floors" are typical explanations for the low representation of women in top executive positions, but a focus on gender differences in promotions provides only a partial explanation. We consider the life-cycle of executive employment, which allows for a full characterization of the gender composition of executive management. We establish that there are few women in executive management because they have lower levels of human capital, are underrepresented in lower-level jobs, and are less likely to be perceived as high-productivity employees. We do not find that women have uniformly unfavorable promotion and demotion probabilities.

Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_15-2.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Why are there so few Women in Executive Positions? An Analysis of Gender Differences in the Life-Cycle of Executive Employment (2015)
Working Paper: Why Are There So Few Women in Executive Positions? An Analysis of Gender Differences in the Life-Cycle of Executive Employment (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hai:wpaper:201502

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.economics ... esearch/working.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Web Technician ().