What if your boss is a woman? Evidence on gender discrimination at the workplace

In this paper, we exploit rich cross-country survey data covering 15 European countries over the period 2000–2015 to investigate the relationship between the gender of the immediate supervisor (i.e., having a male or a female “boss”) and perceived gender discrimination at the workplace. We show that a female boss is associated with reduced gender discrimination, with positive spillovers mainly on female subordinates. We also document a significant heterogeneity across occupations, industries, workplace characteristics, and country clusters. Since female bosses are more likely to be concentrated in female-dominated jobs and more family-friendly work environments, we interpret the above findings as suggestive evidence on the patterns of gender discrimination within workplaces. Results are shown to be consistent with more traditional measures of gender differentials and robust to a number of sensitivity checks.