Federico Curci (Bank of Spain)
Sébastien Fontenay and Tao Wang
This paper studies whether the gender norms of firms trading partners affects gender inequality within exporting firms. We combine French customs data with matched employer-employee records to measure firms exposure to the gender inequality of their export destinations. To identify causal effects, we construct two shift-share instrumental variables based on country-product demand shocks: one exploiting firms pre-existing export networks and another exploiting firms product mix. We find that greater exposure to trading partners from countries with worse gender equality worsens womens career outcomes within French firms. Women in more exposed firms are more likely to remain in lower-tier occupations and less likely to access intermediate and managerial positions. We also find no evidence that changes in exposure to partner-country gender inequality affect female workers firm mobility, suggesting that the results are driven by within-firm changes in promotion dynamics rather than by workforce composition. Overall, the results show that the consequences of trade for gender inequality depend not only on how much firms trade, but also on with whom they trade.