Working Paper
Flexible work is often understood as a way to narrow gender labor market inequality, though causal evidence remains limited.
The authors exploit the UK’s 2014 extension of the Right to Request Flexible Working, which broadened eligibility from parents and carers to all sufficiently tenured employees. The authors find that the reform widened the gender earnings gap by 4.6 percent for eligible workers. This is driven by reductions in women’s labor supply, with no change in the price of an hour of work. Their results suggest that equal access to flexibility may widen earnings inequality if gendered norms around labor supply remain unaddressed.
