Managers and the Cultural Transmission of Gender Norms

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of managers’ gender norms on gender disparities in labor market outcomes. Using data from a multinational operating in over 100 countries, we exploit cross-country manager rotations that are orthogonal to workers to estimate the impact of male managers’ gender attitudes on the work outcomes of male and female workers within the same team. We find that managers from countries with more progressive gender attitudes narrow the gender pay gap, primarily by promoting women at higher rates. The effects last beyond the manager’s rotation and are larger when the manager is assigned to countries with conservative gender attitudes. Moreover, workers in the destination office change their own attitudes, as evidenced by those workers in turn being more gender-equal with their subordinates. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture.