Discriminate Me – If You Can! The Disappearance of the Gender Pay Gap among Public‐Contest Selected Employees in Italy

Castagnetti C, Rosti L, Töpfer M (2020)

Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

Gender, Work & Organization Wiley

Book Volume: 27

Pages Range: 1040-1076

Journal Issue: 6

DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12442

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of public‐contest recruitment on earnings for men and women using Italian microdata over a time period of ten years. We find that the gender pay gap vanishes, and even reverses among young employees when they are selected through public contests. The results suggest that selection mechanisms like public contests may offer a way for merit‐based and gender‐fair wage‐setting. However, since public contests and the public sector are highly correlated, we analyze the gender pay gap by taking into account both the connection between the public and private sector and the open contest issue. By decomposing our results by sector, we find that public contests are a necessary but not sufficient condition for merit‐based and gender‐fair recruitment. Similarly, the institutional environment of the public sector is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ensuring that public contests are merit‐based and gender‐fair screening devices. Taken together, these two factors cause the gender pay gap to disappear.

Authors with CRIS profile

Marina Bonaccolto-Töpfer Lehrstuhl für Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Arbeitsmarkt- und Regionalpolitik

Involved external institutions

Università degli Studi di Pavia IT Italy (IT)

How to cite

APA:

Castagnetti, C., Rosti, L., & Töpfer, M. (2020). Discriminate Me – If You Can! The Disappearance of the Gender Pay Gap among Public‐Contest Selected Employees in Italy. Gender, Work & Organization, 27(6), 1040-1076. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12442

MLA:

Castagnetti, Carolina, Luisa Rosti, and Marina Töpfer. "Discriminate Me – If You Can! The Disappearance of the Gender Pay Gap among Public‐Contest Selected Employees in Italy." Gender, Work & Organization 27.6 (2020): 1040-1076.

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