Gender equality The “daddy’s girl effect” brings women higher wages
Anyone who becomes a father to a daughter is more likely to women and pays them more. At least that’s what a recent study suggests. Where does the sudden empathy come from – and where was it before?
When important men have children, they’re just waiting to share their newfound insights into love, work, and life in general. Only a few celebrity interviews are missing this one phrase, which reliably appears regardless of the interviewee’s profession. Whether manager, politician or musician, hardly anyone can resist the sentence that begins with the words “Since I was a father”. What follows is sometimes more and sometimes less profound.
A Swiss Microsoft manager, for example, only realized since he became a father that in the crisis regions of world children who are worse off than his. A Berlin sports senator has only known since he had two daughters that the city parks are primarily designed for male athletes. And after the birth of his daughter, a German rapper wondered whether his misogynist lyrics from the past could harm her in any way. Most of the time you want to ask the question: And do you notice that now? Followed by: And what are you going to change about it?
Personal experience required
However, it is seldom possible to check whether the supposed change of heart actually entails other actions. For a specific case, however, two economists have now tried to provide evidence, namely for the statement: “Ever since I’ve had a daughter, I’ve noticed that women are disadvantaged in the labor market.” Personal experience is not required for this either After all, this can be seen from the facts: women earn less, are less likely to be in managerial positions, but more often part-time.
Do male managers change that when they have a daughter? Maddalena Ronchi from Milan’s Bocconi University and Nina Smith from Aarhus University do in their current economic study entitled “Daddy’s girl” looking for an answer.
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For this purpose, the economists examine a data set from the Danish population register, in which information about individual employees and their employers is summarized. In this way, they can trace the development of the household parallel to the career progression and assign a company to each individual, as well as information about the employees who are responsible for it and the number, age and gender of the children living in the household.
This is how they can tell if a manager has had a daughter in a year and investigate whether that has changed the composition and pay of the employees who report to him. In their Danish sample, the researchers found evidence that fathers of daughters are actually rethinking. After a manager has his first daughter, he hires more full-time women who are better educated and earn more. As a result, the proportion of women among his employees has risen by 2.9 percent. The proportion of wages paid to women increases by 4.4 percent. This effect already occurs in the year after birth. And it does not arise when a son joins the family or when the daughter is already the second female child.
Daughter changes attitude towards women
Where does this rethinking come from? For Maddalena Ronchi and Nina Smith, the reason for this is that the birth of their daughter made possible discrimination based on gender more present and changed their attitude towards women. In addition, they see in their data that the effect increases with increasing age of the daughter. This suggested that over time men learned what skills women had and what obstacles and limitations they would still face.
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This explanation may be true in some cases, but it does not seem generalizable. Do well-trained managers really lack the ability to recognize an unfair circumstance when it does not involve a close family member? Aren’t the mothers of the daughters also disadvantaged? If anything, the trend appears to be relatively new. Because if misogynistic men who have had daughters had always discarded their sexism and stood up for equality, the current figures on gender inequality would not be so clear. The authors are therefore also skeptical about the lessons that decision-makers could draw from their analysis. The attitude of men towards women needs to change. However, their study shows that this is possible. So every manager would only have to have a daughter.
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