Economics: Economics of Gender

Examines how gender differences produce different economic outcomes for women and men in work, leisure, earnings, poverty. Explores effectiveness of policies to overcome gender gaps. Prerequisites: ECON 1400, ECON 1450.

Prereqs enforced by the system: ECON 1400 and ECON 1450 PACE students by permission and override

Our primary goal is to understand gender inequality, especially in the U.S., but with comparative information from other countries (mainly western, some East Asian). In the past 50 years, the roles of women and men have changed in unprecedented ways in the labor market, in education, and in the household. In some ways, gender inequality has fallen dramatically; in other ways, it’s remarkably persistent. And when it has fallen, sometimes this is because men are doing worse, rather than women doing better. We’ll try to understand all of this in several steps. We’ll start by defining “gender”, then exploring the social construction of “gender norms” (i.e., roughly, what men are “supposed” to be like and what women are “supposed” to be like). We’ll look at how these norms operate in the economy. We’ll analyze the gender division of labor in marriage between the home and the labor market, as an outcome of gender norms, institutions such as childcare provision (or the lack thereof), and comparative advantage. Then we will introduce a bargaining model to ask, who gets more of the benefits of marriage? We’ll study women’s responsibility for children and how it affects women in the labor market. We’ll study economic models of labor market discrimination. We’ll look at the economic forces behind the global decline in childbearing. At the end of the course, I would like you to have some understanding of the gendered economic forces that will shape your life as a man, woman or transgender person, and some insight into the decisions you will have to make about your economic role in the workplace and the family.

Obviously you should attend all the classes and complete all the work with a high level of skill. You will not need to purchase a textbook. All the materials we need are on line.

Three exams, homework, and a paper that you will write in three stages.