A sticky floors model of promotion, pay, and gender

Abstract

According to raw data from the British Household Panel Survey, full-time women are more likely than men to be promoted. Controlling for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity, we find that women are promoted at roughly the same rate as men, but may receive smaller wage increases consequent upon promotion. To help explain these phenomena, we construct a new “sticky floors” model of pay and promotion. In our model, women are just as likely as men to be promoted but find themselves stuck at the bottom of the wage scale for the new grade.