تبعیض جنسیتی و پویایی خود اشتغالی در اروپا

This paper examines the effect that gender-based earnings discrimination has on self-employment dynamics among females, with a focus on four countries in Western Europe. Using data from the European Community Household Panel in the 1999–2001 time period, we test the hypothesis that the probability of moving into self-employment is positively related to prior earnings discrimination, as measured by unexplained deviations from expected (male) earnings. Our findings suggest that women who have lower than expected wage sector earnings are more likely to leave wage employment in the following year. The results with respect to discrimination, per se, however, are mixed.

Over the past several decades, identifying the determinants of self-employment and entrepreneurship behavior has been an important topic in the labor economics literature. Researchers have sought to explain changes in self-employment rates over time, as well as differences in rates across demographic groups. Part of the motivation for these studies has been the fact that governments have pursued the promotion of self-employment as a strategy for reducing unemployment or for increasing labor force activity among disadvantaged groups in particular, including youth, immigrants, ethnic minorities, and women. It is therefore important to identify the factors that affect the choice between employment sectors. It is especially important to determine whether self-employment is a desirable move “upward” for workers, or whether it is a second choice for those dissatisfied in the wage and salary sector. One source of dissatisfaction could be wage or salary earnings less than “expected,” as compared with other workers. In the present paper we examine this question for the case of women. In particular, we focus on gender-based earnings discrimination as a source of the dissatisfaction that could lead women to choose self-employment. Our hypothesis is that women who have earnings less than predicted according to male returns in one period will be more likely to choose self-employment in the following period. We examine the hypothesis using data for four European nations, from the European Community Household Panel survey (ECHP) for the 1999–2001 time period. Our analysis yields mixed results, with a strong effect of deviations from expected female earnings, but less strong results for deviations from male earnings, depending on the model estimated. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a brief summary of recent papers focusing on the role of earnings in explaining sectoral choice. Section 3 presents the rationale for the hypotheses studied, while Section 4 describes the methodology and data used in the study. Results are presented in Section 5. Conclusions and topics for further research are presented in Section 6.