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A warm welcome? Access to advisory services for men and women

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  • Widerstedt, Barbro
  • Månsson, Jonas
  • Rosdahl, Jonatan

Abstract

In politics, broadly stated ambitions such that a service should be available to all are fairly commonplace. However, evaluation access to service in a broader sense is often difficult and expensive. In this study we use a field experiment to investigate if the reception from the business development community differs contingent on the gender of the client. In the experiment, identical email requests were sent to actors in the enterprise promotion system. The result is that response frequency and time were independent of the gender of the sender. However, the male sender was more often given an explicit invitation to book a time slot. To delve further into the responses, we use sentiment analysis, a ‘big data’ method, to analyse the replies. The analysis reveal that replies to the female sender is more positive. Our conclusion is that even if there are some gender differences we would not consider it to be a systematic discrimination. However, the unconsciousness from public servants should be included in training to increase awareness of this issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Widerstedt, Barbro & Månsson, Jonas & Rosdahl, Jonatan, 2018. "A warm welcome? Access to advisory services for men and women," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 100-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:100-110
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2018.01.005
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mike Thelwall & Kevan Buckley & Georgios Paltoglou & Di Cai & Arvid Kappas, 2010. "Sentiment strength detection in short informal text," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(12), pages 2544-2558, December.
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    7. Lina Aldén & Mats Hammarstedt, 2016. "Discrimination in the Credit Market? Access to Financial Capital among Self-employed Immigrants," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(1), pages 3-31, February.
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    13. Mike Thelwall & Kevan Buckley & Georgios Paltoglou & Di Cai & Arvid Kappas, 2010. "Sentiment strength detection in short informal text," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(12), pages 2544-2558, December.
    14. Barbro Widerstedt, 2011. "Swedish regional development initiatives in a gender perspective: Policy evaluated against transversal objectives," ERSA conference papers ersa11p838, European Regional Science Association.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender; Field experiment; Policy evaluation; Business promotion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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