Thoughts on the Devaluation Theory

iainmf · 2017-12-30T03:16:40+00:00

The paper seems to only consider two different kinds of discrimination, completely ignoring non-discriminatory explanations.

Perhaps pay goes down in female-dominated occupations because women are less productive.

Maybe it is because women desire other benefits (fig 4) rather than high pay

Or consider that as women enter a male-dominated profession the labour market significantly increases possibly leading to an over-supply of workers and driving down wages.

Ted8367 · 2017-12-30T04:39:48+00:00

Occupations with a greater share of females pay less than those with a lower share, controlling for education and skill. This association is explained by two dominant views: devaluation and queuing.

Both of these views assume discrimination by employers. They omit any other sort of cause. The bias is built-in from the start.

The former views the pay offered in an occupation to affect its female proportion, due to employers’ preference for men -a gendered labor queue. The latter argues that the proportion of females in an occupation affects pay, owing to devaluation of work done by women.

This is extra confusing because they got "former" and "latter" mixed up (good luck with the logits and fixed-effects stuff later on). But they assume the employers either prefer men, or devalue women. That's the choice.

What they are ignoring as a cause is ordinary market forces - supply and demand. Women - half the population - have exclusive grip on one job - childbirth. Their other job choices are secondary to this, and, whatever they are in detail, they all are derivative from this one common cause. Whatever fields they choose to go into, there will be many, many others making the same choice because they are all coming from the same place. So there will be a greater supply of them, and lower wages as a result.

Title	Thoughts on the Devaluation Theory
Author	AnKo96X
Upvotes	7
Comments	3
Date	December 29, 2017 5:23 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7mvmep/thoughts_on_the_devaluation_theory/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/thoughts-on-the-devaluation-theory.908600 https://theredarchive.com/post/908600

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