Origender - The Origen of Gender Inequality

In the past, a significant part of the gender pay gap could be explained by differences in human capital and discriminatory wage policies, but the reduction of gender differences in education and the implementation of anti-discrimination policies have not removed the pay gap. This calls for further knowledge in order to aid attempts to close the gap. A recent literature highlights the influence of gender identity and norms in shaping the gender pay gap.

Jakob Egholt Søgaard has received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to investigate the question. Jakob explains:

"In ORIGENDER, I aim to advance our knowledge of the role of gender norms in shaping the gender pay gap by answering two key questions: 1) Why are gender roles on the labour market still so traditional, particularly in families with children? 2) Can we quantify how much individuals value traditional gender roles? The answers are both academically interesting and key to the design of public policy.

A MSCA Global Fellowship will give me the possibility to answer these questions by combining the skills and knowledge of two vibrant research environments:

I will spend the first year with Professor Henrik Kleven’s research group at Princeton University, and the second year with Claus Thustrup Kreiner's Center of Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) at the University of Copenhagen. Both institutions employ world-leading economists in the areas of public policy and causal identification using (big) data and, via CEBI, I will have a secure link to the unique Danish data infrastructure and population wide administrative data, enabling me to make significant leaps in our understanding compared to existing literature.Nurture vs. Nature and Quantifying Gender Preference."

Jakob is part of the CEBI center. You can read more about his research at the CEBI webpage.