[Séminaire Caen] The effect of gender equality bargaining on women’s careers - UFR SEGGAT - MRSH

Abstract:
This paper investigates the effects of firm-level gender equality bargaining on the women’s careers using French administrative data. To address the endogeneity issue, we exploit the 2010 reform that introduced financial penalties for firms with 50 employees or more not complying with their obligation of negotiating on gender equality. This change led to a strong acceleration of gender equality bargaining after 2010, but only for firms with 50 employees or more. Using a fuzzy difference-in-differences approach, we identify the causal effect of gender equality bargaining on the share of female workers, the share of women in each occupation and the share of women among part-time workers in the firms concerned by the reform. Then, we assess whether gender equality bargaining significantly affected the impact of motherhood on earnings. Our estimates show that forcing firms to promote measures related to gender equality did not really affect their workforce structure but reinforced the motherhood penalty. While the causal effect of this reform on women’s earnings is close to zero just after the birth of the first child, it turns out to be significantly negative 5 years later. Our results suggest that some measures mentioned in gender equality texts, especially those that favor work-life balance, may act as indirect discrimination against mothers.