Descent set distribution for permutations with cycles of only odd or only even lengths

It is known that the number of permutations in the symmetric group <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> with cycles of odd lengths only is equal to the number of permutations with cycles of even lengths only. We prove a refinement of this equality, involving descent sets: the number of permutations in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> with a prescribed descent set and all cycles of odd lengths is equal to the number of permutations with the complementary descent set and all cycles of even lengths. There is also a variant for <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> . The proof uses generating functions for character values and applies a new identity on higher Lie characters.