Do the long work hours required by many high-paying professions inhibit the entry of women? I investigate this question by studying a 2003 policy that capped the average workweek for medical residents at 80 hours. Using data on the universe of US medical school graduates, I find that when a specialty reduces its weekly hours, more women enter the specialty, whereas there is little change in men’s entry. I provide evidence that the increase in women is due to changes in labour supply, rather than labour demand. At the residency program level, I document that baseline female representation predicts female entry after the reform. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the reallocation of women among medical specialties due to the hours reduction can close the physician gender wage gap by 11%.

This paper documents gender differences in the career paths of novice politicians. Using trajectories of over 11,000 candidates for California local offices and a regression discontinuity approach, I investigate the persistence of candidates after they win or lose elections. Losing an election causes over 50% more attrition among female than male candidates. Yet the gender gap in persistence depends on the setting: there is a smaller gap among candidates for high female representation offices and among candidates with prior elective experience. I discuss how the expected costs and benefits of running again potentially explain the gender gap in persistence.

Do men negatively respond when women first enter an occupation? We answer this question by studying the end of one of the final explicit occupational barriers to women in the United States: in 2016, the U.S. military opened all positions to women, including historically male-only combat occupations. We exploit the staggered integration of women into combat units to estimate the causal effects of the introduction of female colleagues on men’s job performance, behavior, and perceptions of workplace quality, using monthly administrative personnel records and rich survey responses. We find that integrating women into previously all-male units does not negatively affect men’s performance or behavioral outcomes, including retention, promotions, demotions, separations for misconduct, criminal investigations, and medical conditions. Most of our results are precise enough to rule out small detrimental effects. However, there is a wedge between men’s perceptions and performance. The integration of women causes a negative shift in male soldiers’ perceptions of workplace quality. The decline is driven by units integrated with female officers, likely arising from female officers increasing men’s awareness of workplace problems or from men’s dissatisfaction from working with women in positions of authority—even though men in such units show some performance gains. If male-dominated workplaces are reluctant to incorporate women due to expectations that men will become less productive, our paper provides evidence to weigh against that notion.

We provide the first systematic account of summer declines in women's labor market activity. From May to July, US women's employment-to-population ratio declines 1.1pp, whereas men's rises; women's hours worked fall 9.8%, twice the decline among men. School closures for summer break provide a unifying explanation. The summer drop aligns with cross-state differences in school closure timing, is concentrated among mothers with young school-aged children, and coincides with increased time spent on childcare. Gender differences both within and across jobs explain gender gaps in summer exits from employment. Women's summer work interruptions contribute to gender gaps in pay.

Recent evidence indicates that boys and girls are differently affected by the quantity and quality of family inputs received in childhood. We assess whether this is also true for schooling inputs. Using matched Florida birth and school administrative records, we estimate the causal effect of school quality on the gender gap in educational outcomes by contrasting opposite-sex siblings who attend the same sets of schools--thereby purging family heterogeneity--and leveraging within-family variation in school quality arising from family moves. Investigating middle school test scores, absences and suspensions, we find that boys benefit more than girls from cumulative exposure to higher quality schools.