Gender Reality Check: The Labour Market Is Tougher On Women

Relevance: GS1- Role of women GS2 - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Human Resources

(Source: Indian Express, 10/12/2023)

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Why in the news?

• This article discusses the unequal treatment of men and women by the labor market and how women are disadvantaged in terms of occupation and wages.
• Recently, Claudia Goldin was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for Economics for her work on male-female gaps and gender discrimination in employment.

What does Claudia Goldin’s research reveal?

Gender gaps

• Claudia Goldin’s work on labor markets reveals that the market is not gender-neutral but that there is an intricate level of gender discrimination that disadvantages women.
• Using U.S. data, she revealed that such disparities persisted even when women possessed equivalent qualifications to men.

U-shaped relationship

• She suggested that there is a U-shaped relationship between economic development and women's labor force participation.
• Higher female labor force participation is visible in low levels of economic development due to women's engagement in agriculture as unpaid family workers.
• Income effect: With the increase in income and industrialization, women are found to withdraw from paid work, despite their work hours remaining constant.
  • The income effect was found to recede as women became more educated and returned to paid employment.

Gender Wage Gap Among College-Educated Women

• She examined the gender wage gap among college-educated US women over a century in her 2021 book “Gender Wage Gap Among College-Educated Women”.
• Since the 2000s, the wage gap between college-educated men and women has stagnated.
• Although, in earlier decades, men earned more because they were better educated, today women are more likely to have a college degree than men.

What factors of the Gender pay gap did Goldin identify?

• Occupational segregation
  • Women were typically found to work in stereotypical “female” jobs that offered lower pay.
  • She introduced the concept of “greedy jobs” i.e. jobs that offered higher wage premiums but required longer working hours, networking, late-night meetings, and traveling.
  • In a family with two working parents, only one can afford the demands of such a role, and the other parent, usually the mother, would have to assume less demanding work in order to handle childcare, which she called the “mommy track.”
  • This resulted in exacerbating the wage gap.
• Childbirth
  • The gender pay gap was relatively small when men and women worked in factories with pay tied to daily output but widened when monthly pay contracts became common.
  • After having children, women often faced slower career advancement and lower earnings compared to men with the same education and profession.
• Choice and agency
  • Women's professional lives can be significantly influenced by their choices as indicated by her research on blind auditions for female musicians and the impact of oral contraceptives on women's careers.
  • She found that hiring and advancement of women increased when blind auditions were conducted in the orchestra.
  • She also claimed that the availability of the contraceptive pill enabled them to have greater control over their career and pregnancies.

Conclusion

• Although Goldin’s research is applicable to the U.S.A., it is not evident how robustly it would hold for a multi-dimensional society and developing country like India.
• It is, therefore, necessary to support more economic research and analysis in order to make policymaking more gender-sensitive and recognize heterogeneity and intersectionality.

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FAQs

MCQs

Question: Inclusive growth as enunciated in the Eleventh Five Year Plan does not include one of the following: (UPSC CSE 2010)

(a) Reduction of poverty

(b) Extension of employment opportunities

(c) Strengthening of capital market

(d) Reduction of gender inequality

Question: To obtain the full benefits of demographic dividend, what should India do? (UPSC CSE 2013)

(a) Promoting skill development

(b) Introducing more social security schemes

(c) Reducing infant mortality rate

(d) Privatization of higher education

Question: Which of the following gives the 'Global Gender Gap Index' ranking to the countries of the world? (UPSC CSE 2017)

(a) World Economic Forum

(b) UN Human Rights Council

(c) UN Women

(d) World Health Organization