IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfi/wpaper/2026-124.html

Gender Gaps Across the Spectrum of Development: Local Talent and Firm Productivity

Author

Listed:
  • Nava Ashraf

    (STICERD and Department of Economics, LSE)

  • Oriana Bandiera

    (STICERD and Department of Economics, LSE)

  • Víctor Quintas-Martínez

    (Amazon)

  • Virginia Minni

    (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, CEPR, IZA, and J-PAL and NBER)

Abstract

We ask whether the gendered division of work affects firm productivity across the spectrum of economic development. Personnel records of over 100,000 individuals hired by a global firm that operates in 100 countries reveal that the performance of female employees is higher where women are underrepresented in the candidate pool. This implies productivity gains from hiring more women, but realizing them would require increasing women’s pay relative to men. The findings highlight how unequal gender norms in local labor markets create an equity-efficiency trade-off inside the firm, particularly in low-income countries with conservative gender norms.

Suggested Citation

  • Nava Ashraf & Oriana Bandiera & Víctor Quintas-Martínez & Virginia Minni, 2026. "Gender Gaps Across the Spectrum of Development: Local Talent and Firm Productivity," Working Papers 2026-124, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2026-124
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.bfi.uchicago.edu/RePEc/pdfs/BFI_WP_2026-124.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics

    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:bfi:wpaper:2026-124. 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: Toni Shears The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Toni Shears to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    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.