Consider the Evidence » Gender

Leading the Way in Political Opportunity?

Lane Kenworthy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:51:28 +0000

Following up a previous post on political opportunity in the United States and Europe, this graph shows the share of seats held by women in the main legislative body (parliament’s “lower” house) in the U.S. and nineteen other rich democracies. The data are from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Though not far behind France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, America’s share is one of the lowest. When the new Congress convenes in January, women will hold just 17% of the seats in the House of Representatives (and 17% in the Senate). The figure for Germany is 32%. In Sweden, at the high end, it’s 47%.

A report on how women fared in the 2008 U.S. elections is here. A good introduction to cross-country differences and over-time developments is Women, Politics, and Power, by Pam Paxton and Melanie Hughes.

Europe Lagging in Political Opportunity?

Lane Kenworthy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:39:48 +0000

Lagging in one respect, but in another perhaps not so much.

Earlier this week the New York Times ran a piece highlighting skepticism about whether a black or other racial minority politician could replicate Barack Obama’s feat in the not-too-distant future in France or Germany or the U.K. There’s a good bit of truth in this.

But then in today’s NYT I notice photos of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde, and this reminds me that the U.K. elected a female prime minister nearly thirty years ago.

Vote Republican if You Want Equal Pay?

Lane Kenworthy — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:48:33 +0000

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Casey Mulligan points out that over the past half century the pay gap between women and men has shrunk more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. The following chart shows this. The data are from the Census Bureau.

Mulligan argues that the best way to achieve equal pay is therefore “to work for a labor market that creates opportunities for women like it did during the Reagan and the Bush years.” But as the next two charts indicate, the Republican advantage in closing the gender pay gap owes mainly to slow earnings growth for men during Republican administrations, rather than rapid earnings growth for women.

More here and here.

The Shrinking Gender Pay Gap

Lane Kenworthy — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:10:44 +0000

The pay gap between women and men in the United States has been declining fairly steadily since the early 1980s. As the chart below shows, the ratio of median annual earnings by women to that by men (among those employed full-time year-round) increased from .60 in 1980 to nearly .80 in 2006. That’s a good thing insofar as it reflects greater labor market access and opportunity for women.

But the celebration ought to be tempered. Most of us are likely to assume this means women’s earnings have been rising faster than men’s. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Women’s median earnings have been rising. But men’s have been flat; they haven’t budged in a generation.

(The data are in table A-2 of this Census Bureau report.)

There’s no reason to presume a causal relationship between the two; it isn’t likely that men’s earnings have been stagnant because women’s have been rising. After all, prior to the mid-1970s both were increasing.

Still, this poses an interesting question for egalitarians. If forced to choose, which period’s outcome would you prefer? 1960-73, in which both groups experienced absolute increases but the gender gap held constant? Or 1980-2006, in which the gap declined but men experienced no absolute increase?

If you favor the latter period, let me make the choice a little harder. The average rate of growth of women’s median earnings during 1960-73 was 2.2% per year. For 1980-2006 it was 0.9% per year.