Are Male Bosses Bad for Women’s Careers? Evidence from a Multinational Corporation

We study whether gender-based favoritism impedes women’s career progression using data from a European multinational corporation. Leveraging manager reassignments, we show that manager gender does not affect gender differences, neither in wage growth nor in promotion rates. Remarkably, this holds across a wide range of countries and departments, i.e., workforces that differ substantially in terms of gender norms, occupations, and gender composition, but are all subject to the same management practices and corporate culture. Analyzing performance and potential ratings, we find that manager gender only matters in low-stakes decisions that do not affect managers’ own career prospects.