IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v107y2025i1p55-64.html

The Gender Wage Gap in an Online Labor Market: The Cost of Interruptions

Author

Listed:
  • Abi Adams

    (University of Oxford)

  • Kotaro Hara

    (Singapore Management University)

  • Kristy Milland

    (Turker-Nation)

  • Chris Callison-Burch

    (University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

This paper analyzes gender differences in working patterns and wages on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a popular online labor platform. Using information on 2 million tasks, we find no gender differences in task selection nor experience. Nonetheless, women earn 20% less per hour on average. Gender differences in working patterns are a significant driver of this wage gap. Women are more likely to interrupt their working time on the platform with consequences for their task completion speed. A follow-up survey shows that the gender differences in working patterns and hourly wages are concentrated among workers with children.

Suggested Citation

  • Abi Adams & Kotaro Hara & Kristy Milland & Chris Callison-Burch, 2025. "The Gender Wage Gap in an Online Labor Market: The Cost of Interruptions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 107(1), pages 55-64, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:107:y:2025:i:1:p:55-64
    DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01282
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01282
    Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1162/rest_a_01282?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kristy Buzard & Laura K Gee & Olga Stoddard, 2025. "Who You Gonna Call? Gender Inequality in External Demands for Parental Involvement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 140(4), pages 2805-2849.
    2. Xiao Ma & Alejandro Nakab & Camila Navajas-Ahumada & Daniela Vidart, 2025. "The Motherhood Training Penalty," Working papers 2025-04, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Cai, Huan & Dong, Lu & Xie, Jian, 2025. "The Digital Second Shift: Gender Gap in Parenting App Usage in China," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 765, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Dmitry Dagaev & Petr Parshakov & Mikhail Usanin, 2026. "Language segmentation of the online sports labor market: The case of chess coaches," Working Papers w0296, New Economic School (NES).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:107:y:2025:i:1:p:55-64. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The MIT Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.