Evolving patterns of gender inequality over time and across countries

Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd and Gelfand, Michele J. and Kleinhempel, Johannes (2025): Evolving patterns of gender inequality over time and across countries. Published in: Journal of International Business Studies (2025)

Abstract

The last century has seen significant gains in women’s agency and status, declining gender gaps in labor force participation, education, and wages, and ‘a rising tide’ of increasingly gender egalitarian societies. Many expected this process to continue. Yet, unexpectedly, progress towards gender equality has started to stall in many countries. We can even observe a clear backlash against gender equality in some countries. The optimistic predictions of gender convergence as suggested by modernization theory have not materialized. Moreover, counterintuitively, the most gender egalitarian societies (e.g., Denmark and Sweden) have the highest level of gender segregation in jobs and educational fields, a phenomenon also known as the gender-equality paradox. In these countries, women are less likely to major in STEM and more likely to major in the humanities, with generally important consequences for the gender gap in wages. These observations matter for the field of international business (IB), which has studied cross-country differences in gender equality and the implications for management practices across the world. Our theories in IB cannot explain the gender-equality paradox or the backlash against gender equality observed across countries. The good news is that new theorizing is emerging in sociology and political science, with tremendous opportunities for IB. The purpose of our editorial is to describe how these insights can propel IB research, and to chart an exciting way forward.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Gender equality, gender inequality, international business, comparative country studies
• Subjects: M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M1 - Business Administration > M16 - International Business Administration

References

Acemoglu, D., & Autor, D. H. (2011). Skills, tasks and technologies: Implications for employment and earnings. Handbook of Labor Economics, 4(PART B), 1043–1171.

Anduiza, E., & Rico, G. (2024). Sexism and the Far-Right Vote: The Individual Dynamics of Gender Backlash. American Journal of Political Science, 68(2), 478–493.

Autor, D. H., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. H. (2013). The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States. American Economic Review, 103(6), 2121–2168.

Autor, D. H., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. H. (2019). When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men. American Economic Review: Insights, 1(2), 161–178.

Barros, L., & Santos Silva, M. (2025). Economic shocks, gender, and populism: Evidence from Brazil. Journal of Development Economics, 174, 103412.

Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality. Yale University Press.

Bertrand, M. (2020). Gender in the Twenty-First Century. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 110, 1–24.

Blau, F. D., & Kahn, L. M. (2017). The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3), 789–865.

Branisa, B., Klasen, S., & Ziegler, M. (2013). Gender Inequality in Social Institutions and Gendered Development Outcomes. World Development, 45, 252–268.

Buckley, P. J., Doh, J. P., & Benischke, M. H. (2017). Towards a renaissance in international business research? Big questions, grand challenges, and the future of IB scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(9), 1045–1064.

Carranza, E., Das, S., & Kotikula, A. (2023). Gender-based employment segregation: Understanding causes and policy interventions. World Bank Group - Jobs Working Paper #26, 1–61.

Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2020). Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press.

Cassino, D., & Besen-Cassino, Y. (2022). Gender Threat American: Masculinity in the Face of Change. Stanford University Press.

Charles, M. (2011). A World of Difference: International Trends in Women’s Economic Status. Annual Review of Sociology, 37(1), 355–371.

Cotter, D. A., Hermsen, J. M., & Vanneman, R. (2011). The End of the Gender Revolution? Gender Role Attitudes from 1977 to 2008. American Journal of Sociology, 117(1), 259–289.

Devinney, T. M., & Hartwell, C. A. (2020). Varieties of populism. Global Strategy Journal, 10(1), 32–66.

Duflo, E. (2012). Women empowerment and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature, 50(4), 1051–1079.

Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role interpretation. Psychology Press.

Emrich, C. G., Denmark, F., & Den Hartog, D. N. (2004). Cross cultural differences in gender egalitarianism: implications for societies, organizations and leaders. In Cultures, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 343–394). SAGE Publications.

England, P., Levine, A., & Mishel, E. (2020). Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(13), 6990–6997.

Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Fang, S., Xu, D., Xu, L. C., & Shams, H. (2023). Does FDI have a social demonstration effect in developing economies? Evidence based on the presence of women-led local firms. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(7), 1332–1350.

Financial Times. (2024, January 26). A new global gender divide is emerging.

Fitzsimmons, S. R., Özbilgin, M. F., Thomas, D. C., & Nkomo, S. (2023). Equality, diversity, and inclusion in international business: A review and research agenda. Journal of International Business Studies, 54, 1402–1422.

Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., Duan, L., Almaliach, A., Ang, S., Arnadottir, J., Aycan, Z., Boehnke, K., Boski, P., Cabecinhas, R., Chan, D. K. S., Chhokar, J., D’Amato, A., Ferrer, M., Fischlmayr, I. C., … Yamaguchi, S. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science, 332(6033), 1100–1104.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J. A., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895.

Goldin, C. D. (2024). Nobel Lecture: An Evolving Economic Force. American Economic Review, 114(6), 1515–1539.

Hsieh, C.-T., Hurst, E., Jones, C. I., & Klenow, P. J. (2019). The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth. Econometrica, 87(5), 1439–1474.

Hyland, M., Djankov, S., & Goldberg, P. K. (2020). Gendered Laws and Women in the Workforce. American Economic Review: Insights, 2(4), 475–490.

Inglehart, R. F., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65(1), 19–51.

Inglehart, R. F., & Norris, P. (2003). Rising tide: Gender equality and cultural change around the world. Cambridge University Press.

Jackson, R. M. (1998). Destined for Equality: The Inevitable Rise of Women’s Status. In Destined for Equality. Harvard University Press.

Jayachandran, S. (2015). The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries. Annual Review of Economics, 7(1), 63–88.

Kostova, T., & Roth, K. (2002). Adoption of an organizational practice by subsidiaries of multinational corporations: Institutional and relational effects. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 215–233.

Koveshnikov, A., Tienari, J., & Piekkari, R. (2019). Gender in international business journals: A review and conceptualization of MNCs as gendered social spaces. Journal of World Business, 54(1), 37–53.

Kuhar, R., & Patternotte, D. (2017). Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality. Rowman and Littlefield.

Lee, M. (2024). Allocation of Female Talent and Cross-Country Productivity Differences. Economic Journal, 134(664), 3333–3359.

Leone, C., Mocciaro Li Destri, A., & Picone, P. M. (2025). Translation of equality, diversity, and inclusion ideas in a foreign subsidiary. Journal of International Business Studies, 1–23.

Levanon, A., & Grusky, D. B. (2016). The Persistence of Extreme Gender Segregation in the Twenty-first Century. American Journal of Sociology, 122(2), 573–619.

Mathisen, R. B. (2025). Growing Apart: Ideological Polarization between Teenage Boys and Girls. Working Paper.

Meyer, K. E., Mudambi, R., & Narula, R. (2011). Multinational Enterprises and Local Contexts: The Opportunities and Challenges of Multiple Embeddedness. Journal of Management Studies, 48(2), 235–252.

Minefee, I., & Yue, L. Q. (2025). Taking a stand while abroad? Towards a theory of MNCs’ sociopolitical activism in host countries. Journal of International Business Studies, 56(4), 510–529.

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. F. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press.

Parboteeah, K. P., Hoegl, M., & Cullen, J. B. (2008). Managers’ Gender Role Attitudes: A Country Institutional Profile Approach. Journal of International Business Studies, 39(5), 795–813.

Ridgeway, C. L. (2011). Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World. Oxford University Press.

Schäfer, A. (2022). Cultural Backlash? How (Not) to Explain the Rise of Authoritarian Populism. British Journal of Political Science, 52(4), 1977–1993.

Siegel, J., Pyun, L., & Cheon, B. Y. (2019). Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Outsider’s Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(2), 370–397.

The Telegraph. (2025, April 10). Sadiq Khan blocks Accenture from £50m TfL contracts over diversity clash.

UN-Women. (2025). Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, New York: UN-Women.

UN. (2023). United Nations Human Development Reports: Gender Inequality Index (GII), https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/thematic-composite-indices/gender-inequality-index#/indicies/GII.

van der Straaten, K., Narula, R., & Giuliani, E. (2023). The multinational enterprise, development, and the inequality of opportunities: A research agenda. Journal of International Business Studies, 1–19.

Weldon, S. L. (2002). Beyond bodies: Institutional sources of representation for women in democratic policymaking. Journal of Politics, 64(4), 1153–1174.

Welzel, C. (2013). Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. Cambridge University Press.

Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2012). Biosocial Construction of Sex Differences and Similarities in Behavior. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 46, pp. 55–123). Academic Press.

World Economic Forum. (2023). The Global Gender Gap Report 2023.

Zhang, L. (2020). An institutional approach to gender diversity and firm performance. Organization Science, 31(2), 439–457.