Government Policy and Gender Norm: Evidence from the State-Owned Enterprise Reform in Urban China in 1990s
Speaker: Xuejing Zuo (Fundan University)
Date: Nov. 13, Wednesday, 2019
Time: 12 -1 pm
Venue: Room 1050, Pudong Campus
Abstract:
Can government policy change traditional gender-biased culture? Between 1950s and 1990s, gender equality in labor market outcomes was enforced through the central planning labor arrangement in urban China with one of goals to change the traditional attitude toward women. To evaluate whether this over 40-year long government intervention successfully eliminate the influence of traditional gender norms, I first examine the effect of the national State-owned enterprise (SOE) reform from 1996 to 2001 on gender inequality in labor market outcomes. The results from both the difference-in-differences and instrumental variable strategies suggest that the SOE reform negatively affected women's labor market outcomes substantially more than men's outcomes. Next, I find that increased gender employment gap is driven by relatively old (between age 40 and 54) and lower educated (less than high school) women who are from lower income household. Moreover, only limited increased gender wage gap can be explained by economic reasons. To explore whether the response to the SOE reform varied by historical gender norms, I first use sex ratio at birth, a revealed preference for son, as a proxy and I find that widening gender gaps are mostly driven by the areas with high sex ratio. Additionally, I use the number of genealogy collected at the county level to proxy historical Confucianism, a dominant culture valued women less than men in China, and I find the similar results with using the contemporary sex ratio at birth as a proxy. These results are consistent with the persistence of traditional gender norms.
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