Who moves up the career ladder? A model of gender differences in job promotion

This paper presents an adverse selection model that contributes to explain why women are less likely to be promoted. There are two types of workers: family-committed and job-committed workers. The cost of job effort during the first period of the working life is higher for the former. Firms offer two types of contract, one involving high effort during the first period with promotion possibilities and the other requiring low effort but with no opportunity for promotion attached. We show that women are less likely to apply for jobs with promotion possibilities, but when they do, women are just as likely to succeed as men.