Understanding Women’s Lower Participation than Men as Workers, Top Managers, and Owners in Private Firms in the EU-27 Countries

Publication:
Understanding Women’s Lower Participation than Men as Workers, Top Managers, and Owners in Private Firms in the EU-27 Countries

dc.contributor.author	Amin, Mohammad
dc.date.accessioned	2025-02-27T22:39:34Z
dc.date.available	2025-02-27T22:39:34Z
dc.date.issued	2025-02-27
dc.description.abstract	This Brief examines issues related to women’s participation as workers, top managers, and owners of private firms in 27 European Union countries (EU-27), using the rich database of the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The analysis focuses on EU regions varying between about 800,000 and 3 million inhabitants (NUTS2-level groupings). Overall, women’s participation as workers, top managers, and firm owners is statistically significantly less than that of men. Surprisingly, richer NUTS2 regions experience a larger gender gap favoring men in employment, top manager positions, and firm ownership. Another worrying feature is that relative to men, women workers tend to be concentrated in firms that are less productive and pay low wages. Thus, closing gender gaps in income requires not just more jobs but also better quality of jobs for women. Having a woman as the top manager of the firm is associated with a higher share of women workers in the firm, but this effect is much stronger when the firm initially has a relatively high share of women workers. A gender gap also exists in labor productivity, which is lower for women-run firms than men-run firms, and for firms with higher women’s ownership. These gaps in labor productivity are much larger at lower quantiles of labor productivity, implying the presence of sticky floors but not necessarily glass ceilings in the EU-27 countries. The Brief identifies some of the factors that are correlated with the average gender labor productivity gap and estimates their contribution to the gap. There is no systematic difference in the level of constraints, including access to finance, faced by men-run versus women-run firms and/or by firms at different levels of women’s ownership.	en
dc.identifier	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099538002142530899
dc.identifier.doi	10.1596/42877
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1596/42877
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10986/42877
dc.language	English
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	Washington, DC: World Bank
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Enterprise Note; No. 45
dc.rights	CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO
dc.rights.holder	World Bank
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/igo
dc.subject	GENDER EQUALITY
dc.subject	GENDER GAP
dc.subject	WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION
dc.subject	LABOR PRODUCTIVITY
dc.title	Understanding Women’s Lower Participation than Men as Workers, Top Managers, and Owners in Private Firms in the EU-27 Countries	en
dc.type	Brief
dspace.entity.type	Publication
okr.date.disclosure	2025-02-27
okr.date.doiregistration	2025-04-14T11:53:10.667385Z
okr.date.lastmodified	2025-02-17T08:10:59Z	en
okr.doctype	Brief
okr.doctype	Publications & Research
okr.docurl	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099538002142530899
okr.guid	099538002142530899
okr.identifier.docmid	IDU-55710952-8994-4ffc-9772-bdc047bd5845
okr.identifier.externaldocumentum	34456169
okr.identifier.internaldocumentum	34456169
okr.identifier.report	197384
okr.import.id	6726
okr.imported	true	en
okr.language.supported	en
okr.pdfurl	https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099538002142530899/pdf/IDU-55710952-8994-4ffc-9772-bdc047bd5845.pdf	en
okr.region.geographical	Europe
okr.topic	Gender::Gender and Economics
okr.topic	Social Protections and Labor::Employment and Unemployment
okr.unit	DECEA - Enterprise Analysis-WB