Discriminatory Social Attitudes and Varying Gender Pay Gaps within Firms

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and firms’ pay-setting behavior by combining information about regional votes on constitutional amendments on equal rights for women and men with a large data set of multi-establishment firms and workers. The results show a strong relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and gender pay gaps within firms across regions. The results remain robust, even when the authors account for detailed worker and job characteristics and for regional sorting of firms. Overall, the results suggest that gender pay gaps are larger in regions where more people oppose gender equality rights. In other words, in the same firm women earn lower wages than their male coworkers in regions where more people have discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality.