Chih Yun, Hung

3034427114

ECON 133 “Global Inequality and Growth”

Mandatory Reading # 3

Bertrand (2017), “The Glass Ceiling”.

1. Define the term glass ceiling and broadly describe how it evolved over the past 50
years.
 Glass ceiling means that invisible obstacles make working women be more
difficult to get promoted to the higher level positions than male professionals.
This situation particularly causes the underrepresentation of women in high-
level earning distribution.
 Women’s labor force participation rate rapidly increased from 48 percent in the
1970s to 69 percent in the 1990s and has stood at around 70 percent since the
late 1990s. We can see the similar path when observing the share of women
whose earnings are at or above the different percentile. However, the growth of
share is more muted when analyzing the share of working women whose
earnings are at or above the 90 percentile of the distribution of earnings among
men. The share of working women whose earnings are above the median of
men’s earnings increased from 5 percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 2010. In
addition, the share of working women whose earnings that are above the 90th
percentile only increased from 0.6 percent in 1970 to 2.2 percent in 2010. It
obviously shows that even though the representation of women in different labor
income groups gradually grows, the gender gap in earnings is still big/huge
especially at the top. The glass ceiling has kept hindering the advancement of
working women and is yet to be shattered.

2. How does section 5.1 in Piketty Saez Zucman (2016) – your first assigned reading –
complements the results in table 1 of the Bertrand paper?
 Piketty, Saez and Zucman (2016) apply the administrative tax data that
eliminates the top coding income problem from the survey-based data like
Bertrand’s paper. It can reflect more actual income comparison between women
and men at the top.
 In addition, Piketty, Saez and Zucman (2016) represent the shares of women in
the top 10%, top 1% and top 0.1% of the labor income while Bertrand only
catches up to the share of working women with incomes above top 10% of
incomes among working men. They complement the more detail conditions of
glass ceiling in the top income groups. It also confirms the steady earnings
 Chih Yun, Hung
3034427114

growth for working women between the 1970s to the 1990s and shows that the
growth is smaller when the income group is higher. Since 1999, the
representation of women in the topmost income group has slightly increased.
The glass ceiling is yet to be cracked.

3. Explain in what ways higher demand for flexibility impacts the gender pay gap at the
top.
 Many higher-paying jobs such as business-type occupations require long and
inflexible working hours. Women who tend to do these jobs are held back from
reaching the top because these occupations have rigid work schedules.
 The research shows the fact that the elasticity of earnings to working hours is
larger in the higher paying jobs and this trend obviously increased from 1980 to
2000. Since then, the rewards for inflexible jobs have climbed up which make
higher demand for flexibility a disadvantage to keep the gender pay gap at the
top.

4. Describe the elements that contributed to the decrease in women non-market work.
What factors could explain that there still is a gap in non-market work between men
and women?
 The first element which decreases the women non-market work is that
household technological change helps the development of automated and time-
saving appliances. It makes people be it easier for people to keep an organized
household without spending much time. The second one is the low-skilled
immigration, which particularly lets high-wage women get outsourcing options
for their housework. These changes contribute into decreasinge the non-market
work for women especially for the higher educated or those with higher income
because they are more likely to afford new technologies and the outsourcing
help.
 Even though families can outsource a part of child-care activities, this might not
be perfectly substituted for parenting activities. Well-educated parents probably
consider that they are able to provide higher quality of caring for their kids by
themselves/on their own. In the case of the remaining gender norms, this
thought could explain why the gap in non-market work between men and
women still exists. On the other hand, despite the decreasing of cline on gender
norms that mothers should be the main providers of household works, a
research shows that it is still a big issue when working mothers need to balance
their time between career and work and family. The gGender identity norms
 Chih Yun, Hung
3034427114

that the man’s salary should be higher than his wife makes the high-earning
wife take on more of household work s in order to ease the effect of gender
norms. It still causes the gap in non-market work between men and women to
exist.

5. If you were to choose a public policy to reduce the glass ceiling, what would it be?
Explain why it is your top choice. In particular, what root of the glass ceiling would
this policy be addressing and why would it be effective.
 I choose the policy of gender-neutralizing childcare to encourage fathers to take
the parental leave. From this paper, we can know that gender and social norms
still exist and largely affect the actual behaviors such as women should take
more non-market work than their husbands. That is to say, social norms make
women have higher demand for work flexibility and so the glass ceiling remains. Formatted: Font: (Default) Arial
and then lead to remain the glass ceiling. Gender-neutralizing childcare such as
“Daddy Quotas” can help shift the social norms to correct the thought “mothers
are the main providers for non-market work”. If we can change the existing
social norms through Daddy Quotas policy, working women might not have
higher demand for work flexibility than men. Thus, this change can reduce a
part of the glass ceiling. I consider that this is an effective way because it not
only intends to reshape the division of household work within the family but also
improves women’s labor outcomes.