| With the popularization of gender equality awareness,the gender inequality of employment in the business environment has attracted more and more academic attention.Such gender inequality exists not only in the ordinary labor market,but also deserves attention in the management of enterprises.Among the main factors that influence the socialization process of gender equality,the social concept factor has a strong power and can subtly guide people’s behavior.China has a long history and unique cultural background.Confucian culture has dominated the traditional Chinese cultural system for thousands of years.Its unique gender concept has a profound impact on the gender equality in the commercial society.Based on the data of listed companies from 2003 to 2018 in China,this paper empirically studies whether there are differences in class of position and compensation between female and male executives,and whether such differences are influenced by Confucian culture.This paper finds that,first,female executives hold significantly lower class of position than male executives.Second,female executives’pay is significantly lower than that of male executives.Third,enterprises that are more influenced by Confucian culture have a wider gender gap in their position.Fourth,enterprises that are more influenced by Confucian culture have a wider gender gap in their executives’compensation.In this paper,the instrumental variable method is used to alleviate endogeneity problems and a series of robust tests are carried out.At the same time,this paper further finds that,in addition to the absolute value of compensation,female executives’ compensation sensitivity is also significantly lower than that of male executives,and the gender differences of compensation sensitivity in enterprises are also subtly influenced by Confucian culture.Gender pay difference mainly exists among non-CEO executives.The invasion of foreign culture will weaken the influence of Confucian culture.Female CEOs can significantly reduce the gender gap within enterprises,and mitigate the influence of Confucian culture.In state-owned enterprises,the gender gap in class of position is even greater.The contributions of this paper are as follows:First,this paper focus the research on gender equality in the management level,and supplements the deficiencies of the existing literature.Secondly,from the perspective of culture,this paper is a supplement to the research on culture and finance. |
