Is there a Gender Bias in the Use of Foreign Languages in Europe?

What is it about?

The process of globalization has given incentives to workers to learn foreign languages. This paper studies if foreign languages are used differently by men and women at their jobs and if they have a different impact on salaries. Men and women have higher wages if they know foreign languages. In Finland and Germany, there are no significant differences in language premium that is similar for both for men and women. This is not so in France, where the returns on foreign languages are significantly higher for men than for women. Finally, in Italy and Spain, and to a lower extent in Denmark, the premium increases faster for men than for women. Discrimination, or at least the existence of a glass ceiling linked to this specific type of human capital, is pointing its head under different forms in France, Italy, Spain and Denmark, but less so in other Northern countries.

Featured Image