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Women's status has changed substantially since the time when Schopenhauer laughed at the very idea of women holding a position of power.(1) Women are now more educated than men, and go out to work not only, as in the past, to provide a second source of income for their family, but also, in many cases, to achieve personal fulfilment and a satisfying career. Despite their education and labour market investment, women's wages are still lower, on average, than those of men. There are several explanations for this: women more often work part-time; they are also more qualified, but the subjects they study prepare them for careers in less well paid lines of work. Yet even after taking these factors into account, a non-negligible share of the gender wage gap remains unexplained. This means either that women face discrimination on the labour market, or that other less obvious or less measurable factors are at play. For example, gender differences in the priority given to work, in personality, values or attitudes may play a role. In the final summary on gender questions in the Handbook of Labor Economics, Bertrand (2010) suggested exploring this angle, after describing the results of laboratory experiments that revealed gender differences in negotiating skills and in attitudes to risk and competition.(2) Psychological research has also identified gender disparities in personality traits and preferences. In her theory of preferences, Hakim (2004) highlights the importance of values and attitudes in employment decisions and career choices, but also in pay levels, when personal goals and preferences are involved rather than general moral stances or opinions. Hence, while women's place on the labour market, and in society more generally, has been transformed since Schopenhauer's time, the social norms which shape our preferences still bear the stigmata of long-standing past beliefs. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of these gender differences in preferences and attitudes on the French labour market, and on the gender pay gap in particular. It follows on from work by Filer (1983), Mueller and Plug (2006), Fortin (2008), Grove et al. (2011), Cobb-Clark and Tan (2011), and Nyhus and Pons (2012) on the role of these factors qualified as "non-cognitive" in the international economic literature.
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