Dips and Floors in Workplace Training: Gender Differences and Supervisors

Date01 September 2015
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12080
Published date01 September 2015
AuthorGrit Muehler,Bernd Fitzenberger
DIPS AND FLOORS IN WORKPLACE
TRAINING: GENDER DIFFERENCES
AND SUPERVISORS
Bernd Fitzenberger* and Grit Muehler**
ABSTRACT
This article provides a detailed decomposition analysis of the gender differences
in workplace training throughout the working life with a particular focus on
parental leave and supervisors using personnel records from a large German
firm. Females obtain less training during the early career, and more at higher
age. The timing of the training gap seems to be driven by diverging career paths
associated with employment interruptions. However, we find no evidence for
catching-up effects after parental leave. Furthermore, including supervisor-fixed
effects cannot explain the gender differences in training. The training of both
male and female employees is positively associated with the training of the
supervisor.
II
NTRODUCTION
Workplace training is important for the acquisition of human capital after the
end of the primary education in school and university (OECD, 2003). By pro-
viding workplace training, firms aim at developing the skills and competencies
of their employees during their professional careers to retain or increase their
productivity. And by participating in workplace training, employees can
expect positive effects not only on wages, but also on employment prospects
or career development (see Groot, 1999; Asplund, 2005; Hansson, 2008, for
comprehensive reviews). When starting a job after the initial secondary or ter-
tiary education, workplace training provides the necessary job-specific knowl-
edge to build a career in the industry chosen. Workplace training may be
necessary for career progression and for catch up after employment interrup-
tions.
The gender training gap may evolve in different ways. On one hand, gender
differences in career paths may be associated with a gender training gap,
which grows with age, potentially reinforcing gender differences in outcomes.
Individual incentives to participate in training are the higher the longer the
*University of Freiburg
**Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW)
Scottish Journal of Political Economy, DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12080, Vol. 62, No. 4, September 2015
©2015 Scottish Economic Society.
400
pay-back period (Becker, 1964). Hence, older employees and female employees
are likely to participate less in training (Bishop, 1996; OECD, 2003). Anti-
cipating longer employment interruptions or a higher incidence of part-time
work, management might refrain from providing and financing workplace
training for women (Barron et al., 1993). On other hand, workplace training
may also be a means for female or older employees to catch up. When retur-
ning full time to the labor market, female employees might find it necessary
to engage more into workplace training than males of equal age due to greater
training needs. Females may also use workplace training to signal their high
labor force attachment. Bishop (1996) finds evidence for greater training needs
the shorter the tenure within a job.
Lower workplace training by females could also be due to the fact that a
supervisor may prefer higher training of employees of the same gender
(Shakeshaft et al., 1991; Rothstein, 1997; Melero, 2004). The supervisor’s
observed training behavior may reflect his/her views on the needs of training
for employees. If positions of supervisors are predominantly filled by males,
this would not only result in initial differences but also contribute to a widen-
ing of the gender training gap as workers age in their job.
Using personnel records from a single large German firm, this article takes
a life cycle perspective to analyze the age profile of the gender training gap by
applying an age-specific decomposition approach. The article makes two sub-
stantive and two small methodological contributions. First, we use very reli-
able panel data on all employees in a large firm in the financial industry to
analyze both the incidence and the duration of training. Our analysis is an
example of insider econometrics holding firm characteristics and the manage-
ment strategies constant (Ichniowski and Shaw, 2003; Bartel et al., 2004). Sec-
ond, our study is the first to analyze empirically the impact of both the
training behavior and the gender of the supervisor on the amount of training
and the gender training gap among the subordinates. As a first methodologi-
cal contribution, our article is the first to decompose the continuous age pro-
file of the gender differences in workplace training. We estimate the age
specific characteristics effect, the age specific coefficient effect, and the age
composition effect. As a second methodological contribution, we use a
weighted block bootstrap approach (Barbe and Bertail, 1995) for the decom-
position results based on probit regressions for the incidence of training. We
adapt the approach to estimate clustered standard errors for the decomposi-
tion results.
Our empirical results show a gender training gap close to zero at the age of
25. The gap grows afterwards and peaks at age 35, when females have a
0.75 days shorter training duration per year. This divergence in training
behavior can be mainly attributed to differences in characteristics (such as
wage, working time, or position in the firm). There is no catching-up effect
after child birth. Furthermore, including supervisor-fixed effects cannot
explain the gender differences in training. However, the training of both male
and female employees is positively associated with the training duration of the
supervisor.
DIPS AND FLOORS IN WORKPLACE TRAINING 401
Scottish Journal of Political Economy
©2015 Scottish Economic Society

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