To be or not to be? Risk attitudes and gender differences in union membership
(2016) In Lund Papers in Economic History. Education and the Labour Market- Abstract
- Attracting membership while stifling freeriding and heterogeneous preferences among potential members is critical for trade union success. Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions, particularly at the onset of the labor movement. We highlight a previously neglected explanation for this: the importance of risk and gender differences in assessment hereof. We study matched employer-employee data from two industries around the year 1900 where union membership was associated with different levels of risk: the Swedish cigar and printing industries. We find that the gender gap in membership was larger in the high-risk environment (cigar) and smaller in the low-risk environment (printing). Women were not hard to organize but... (More)
- Attracting membership while stifling freeriding and heterogeneous preferences among potential members is critical for trade union success. Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions, particularly at the onset of the labor movement. We highlight a previously neglected explanation for this: the importance of risk and gender differences in assessment hereof. We study matched employer-employee data from two industries around the year 1900 where union membership was associated with different levels of risk: the Swedish cigar and printing industries. We find that the gender gap in membership was larger in the high-risk environment (cigar) and smaller in the low-risk environment (printing). Women were not hard to organize but avoided risks and uncertain returns. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/8837866
- author
- Karlsson, Tobias LU and Stanfors, Maria LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2016
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- trade unions, risk aversion, gender, 19th century, 20th century, Sweden
- in
- Lund Papers in Economic History. Education and the Labour Market
- issue
- 144
- pages
- 37 pages
- publisher
- Department of Economic History, Lund University
- project
- The Emergence of Wage Discrimination
- Manufacturing gender inequality
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 44635506-f529-4259-854a-5b86ed654640 (old id 8837866)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 11:03:23
- date last changed
- 2022-09-01 17:48:59
@misc{44635506-f529-4259-854a-5b86ed654640, abstract = {{Attracting membership while stifling freeriding and heterogeneous preferences among potential members is critical for trade union success. Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions, particularly at the onset of the labor movement. We highlight a previously neglected explanation for this: the importance of risk and gender differences in assessment hereof. We study matched employer-employee data from two industries around the year 1900 where union membership was associated with different levels of risk: the Swedish cigar and printing industries. We find that the gender gap in membership was larger in the high-risk environment (cigar) and smaller in the low-risk environment (printing). Women were not hard to organize but avoided risks and uncertain returns.}}, author = {{Karlsson, Tobias and Stanfors, Maria}}, keywords = {{trade unions; risk aversion; gender; 19th century; 20th century; Sweden}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Working Paper}}, number = {{144}}, publisher = {{Department of Economic History, Lund University}}, series = {{Lund Papers in Economic History. Education and the Labour Market}}, title = {{To be or not to be? Risk attitudes and gender differences in union membership}}, url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5684194/8837867.pdf}}, year = {{2016}}, }