Gender Dualism between Platitudes and Half-truths

Abstract

In modern economic systems, discrimination – and the resulting allocative inefficiency – occurs when “individuals with the same economic characteristics receive different wages and the differences are systematically correlated with certain non-economic characteristics of the individual” (Stiglitz, 1973). A significant example of this is occupational segregation: the gender stereotypes from which it originates reduce the efficiency of the economic system and the prospects for development, determining, on the one hand, under-utilization of the female workforce and, on the other, a distortion in the investment in human capital (Hartmann, 1976). The former can be translated in terms of the gender pay gap (articulation of the more general global gender gap index) even though there has long been a decrease in the gap in the employment rate (World Economic Forum, 2018, 2019, 2020). Female employment remains more concentrated in precarious, low-skilled, and therefore low-paid jobs. This depends not only on the glass ceiling (which hinders the careers of professional women) but also on a greater inequality among women themselves, between high-skilled and low-skilled workers (Saraceno 2015, 2017). It entails the risk of producing feedback effects that not only perpetuate the gender gap but feed, within the female population, the same dynamics found between men and women. On these premises, this paper investigates how two factors - the widening economic gaps and the crisis of the last decade - have impacted on the gender gap trend. We will also consider the consequent structural and socio-cultural changes.