Elon alumus Annie Hoffman, a 2000 graduate, and Steve DeLoach, assistant professor of economics, recently published a paper in the Atlantic Economic Journal.
Their paper, “Russia’s Second Shift: Is Housework Hurting Women’s Wages?” investigates whether any portion of the gender wage differential (women make 70 percent of men’s wages) can be explained by the fact that Russian women spend significantly more time doing housework than their male counterparts.
Previous scholars have suggested that Russian women might be less committed to the workplace than men, due to their household responsibilities. However, Hoffman and DeLoach found no evidence of this, despite the fact that Russian women spend 3 times as many hours in the home as men. This implies that there is little economic justification for the observed differences in male and female’s wages.
Hoffman and DeLoach started collaborating on this study during the summer of 1999 as part of a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE).