Gender and Economic Growth
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 3, 2027 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
- Chair: David Escamilla-Guerrero, University of St Andrews
Unfinished Business: The Long Ascent of Women into Corporate Leadership
Abstract
We study the prevalence of women as corporate executives and directors using new data covering nearly all major American firms, both private and public, from 1950 to 2010. In 1950, only about 5 percent of executives and directors were women. By 2010, women held 11.8 percent of directorships and 15 percent of executive positions. Women made up a larger share of leadership in family-owned firms, smaller firms, and private firms, although public companies became more likely to include at least one woman on their boards after 2000. We also find that female executives were less likely than men to be promoted to higher-ranking positions, move to other firms, or be appointed as corporate directors—even after accounting for their roles and areas of expertise. Despite women’s rapid gains in professional occupations and in the labor force overall, their advancement into top business leadership roles has remained more limited.Printing and Women: The Gendered Impact of Printing Technology in China
Abstract
Economists have long argued that technologies can exhibit gender-biased impacts, often focusing on gender-specific innovations such as plowing and weaving. This study shifts the focus to woodblock printing---a seemingly gender-neutral technology---and examines its long-term gendered impact on educational outcomes in China. Combining historical data on poet presence with cohort-level literacy data from the 1982 Census, I find that women's educational outcomes derived greater marginal benefits than men's from increased availability of woodblock-printed books, a pattern that persisted until the onset of Mao's Mass Education Reform in 1949. To address potential endogeneity, I employ an instrument variable strategy that exploits river distance to locations suitable for bamboo cultivation (a crucial raw material for printing paper) as an exogenous source of variation in woodblock printing availability. I attribute the female-biased impact to the substitutive role of woodblock printing for formal schooling, which reduced the cost of transmitting literacy within households. This margin was particularly important for girls, who faced lower expected returns to education and more limited access to schools than boys, a mechanism supported by parent–child literacy regression using the census data. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of institutions in shaping the effects of technology.The U.S. Civil War's Impact on Women's Work and Political Participation
Abstract
This paper studies the role of economic participation via the labor market in enabling the political mobilization of an underrepresented group. Specifically, we study the wives and daughters of disabled Union Army soldiers after the U.S. Civil War. Linking Union Army enlistment records to the 1860 and 1870 U.S. censuses, we find that the wives and daughters of disabled veterans were significantly more likely to participate in the labor force than those of non-disabled veterans. Historical evidence suggests that disabled veterans were also more exposed to postwar alcohol and substance abuse, increasing the household burdens faced by women. Town-level data show that increases in women's labor force participation combined with higher shares of disabled veterans predict more Temperance Crusade activity in 1873-74. Information provision via newspapers and proximity to other protest towns amplify these effects. Using unit-level disability rates as an instrument for veterans' disability status supports a causal interpretation of the labor market effects. Our results suggest that labor force participation can be an important enabling factor for the political mobilization of underrepresented groups.JEL Classifications
- N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy