Persistence and change in age-specific gender gaps: Hollywood actors from the silent era onward

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Robert K. Fleck ^{rfleck@clemson.edu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; F. Andrew Hanssen ; ^{fhansse@clemson.edu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：J16 ; N32
• 刊名：International Review of Law and Economics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：October 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：48
• 期：Complete
• 页码：36-49
• 全文大小：1083 K

文摘

In this paper, we examine a set of workers for whom age-based and gender-based discrimination has been widely alleged: motion picture actors. We document, measure, and consider possible explanations for age-specific gender gaps among Hollywood actors, using nearly a century’s worth of data on films and film roles. Consistent with reports in the popular press, we find a large and very persistent gender gap: Of the nearly half-million different roles played in more than 50,000 feature films between 1920 and 2011, two-thirds have gone to males, and the average male actor is consistently older (by six to ten years) than the average female actor. Yet the age-based gender differences that we observe cannot be explained by a simple model of discrimination—while there are fewer roles for middle-aged women than for middle-aged men, there are more roles for young women than for young men. The fact that these patterns have held steady through major changes in the film industry – and in society as a whole – suggests that correspondingly stable aspects of moviegoer preferences contribute to the age-specific nature of gender gaps.