Closing Gender Gaps through Workplace Diversity: The Intergenerational Effects of World War I

This paper combines personnel records of the U.S.

This paper combines personnel records of the U.S. government with census data to study how exposure to greater female representation at work can persistently reduce intergenerational gender gaps in labor market outcomes. Exploiting city-by-department variation in the sudden expansion of female employment during World War I, we find that daughters of civil servants exposed to female co-workers are more likely to work later in life. This intergenerational effect operates through exposed fathers and extends beyond the public sector, reducing the earnings gap by 12%. Consistent with a broader shift in attitudes toward working women, exposure to female co–workers also made male civil servants more likely to marry working women. We show that cities exposed to larger increases in female federal workers saw persistently higher female labor force participation in both the public and the private sector. Increasing gender representation within the public sector can thus have broader labor market implications.