IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/929.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Theory of Gender Discrimination Based on the Household

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Francois

Abstract

This paper presents a new theory of gender discrimination in competitive labour markets which does not rely on any inherent gender asymmetries. Women and men are organized into households with each having identical household specific human capital. When labour market characteristics (effort, wages) differ, the possibility of mutually beneficial within household trades arises. Discrimination involves occupational segregation with men obtaining high paying efficiency wage jobs and women in piece rate work. It is shown that there always exists a Nash equilibrium in which firms benefit from discrimination by allocating high paying jobs exclusively to men, provided other firms also do so, as this ensures their employees (men) enjoy the benefits of within household trade and will satisfy incentive compatibility at a lower wage. A firm attempting to hire women in efficiency wage jobs makes strictly lower expected profits, since the predominance of men in the labour market means women are less likely to enjoy the benefits of within household trade and more likely to shirk. The model thus provides an intuitive explanation for discrimination in competitive labour markets even when the sexes are completely identical. It also suggests a positive role for affirmative action policies in moving the economy from the discrimination to a non-discrimination equilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Francois, 1996. "A Theory of Gender Discrimination Based on the Household," Working Papers 929, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_929.pdf
    File Function: First version 1996
    Download Restriction: no

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elul, Ronel & Silva-Reus, Jose & Volij, Oscar, 2002. "Will you marry me?: A perspective on the gender gap," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 549-572, December.
    2. Francois, Patrick, 1998. "Gender discrimination without gender difference: theory and policy responses," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 1-32, April.
    3. Francois, Patrick & van Ours, Jan C., 2000. "Gender Wage Differentials in a Competitive Labor Market: The Household Interaction Effect," IZA Discussion Papers 202, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender discrimination; efficiency wages; household models;

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:929. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Babcock). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.