Dear all,

I am writing an essay using an unbalanced panel dataset. Right now I am using a Linear Probability Model with time and company fixed effects.
My research question is if the number of women in a department increases the probability of the head of the department to be female as well.

I'm using the discrete variable for the number of women in the department as the main dependent variable. I ran the regression in Stata with the xtreg command the coefficient of my main x-variable was significant on the 5 % level and positive.

Now I wanted to transform my discrete variable into a dummy variable which is equal to 1 if four or more women work in the department.
When running the new regression with the same control variables as before, the coefficient of the dummy variable becomes insignificant. It is just above 0.

How can this be since the discrete variable was statistically significant? How can a change from 0 to 1 woman for example have an impact on the probability of Y=1 but not the change of 0 to 4 women?

I really appreciate your help. Thank you.