Four Liberal Measures to Combat Wage Inequality Against Women by Cecília Lopes
Four Liberal Measures to Combat Wage Inequality Against Women
by LOLA Brazil President, Cecília Lopes
Published in Terraco Economico
A social phenomenon seen in various parts of the globe, the gender wage gap, has been widely discussed by the Brazilian society – often in a demagogic or prejudiced manner. Fact is that, according to IBGE, although women are the majority in higher education – education as one of the main variables that explain the salary – they fail to earn 25% of men’s remuneration for the same service.
Much of what is justified, demagogically, is that such a difference occurs as a function of objectives, such as career choice, geography, experience, among others. If only that were true: according to the Rio Grande do Sul Government Foundation for Economics and Statistics, only 2/3 of the gender pay gap has clear explanations. In other words, a significant part of this disparity has no rational justification.
This is a poorly addressed issue on both sides of the political spectrum: many more left-wing people advocate ineffective measures that will do more harm than good – such as punishing employers who pay differential wages or setting prices. At the other extreme, on the right, there are those who say that there is no non-interventionist solution to the problem, preferring to ignore it – or even say it does not exist – in the first place.
Faced with this big problem – many women earning less than they should – we will list four possible measures (two governmental and two cultural) that could reduce or even eradicate the Gender Wage Gap in the long run without interfering with the freedom of market players.
1. Parental Leave
A big reason why women earn less in Brazil is the current design of maternity leave. Under Brazilian law, the burden of pregnancy, as of early childhood, falls disproportionately on the mother relative to the father.
Such a design offers harmful incentives to female labor, as hiring a woman in Brazil becomes expensive and risky. Balancing responsibilities equally, a new model of parental leave would combine maternity and paternity leave into one, to be shared freely between parents. This way, the risks and responsibilities are less unevenly divided, and the cost of hiring a woman is closer to hiring a man.
2. Child Care & Day Care
After motherhood, Brazilian mothers face yet another challenge: the astonishingly large shortage of childcare places. Forced to take care of her child and away from work, finding a job is more difficult – and thus the possibility of accepting lower pay is greater. In 2015, according to the IBGE, over 75% of children under four were not enrolled in early childhood education units. This absence mainly affects poor women who cannot afford the costs of the private network – consequently, the deficit contributes to greater income inequality.
To understand this question, one must keep in mind that most of the resources of education are for higher education. In 2017, it was estimated that 58% of the budget would have this purpose: from $136 billion, $79.7 billion would go to funding public universities and scholarships, while $56.3 billion would go to basic education .
At a time of budget deficit, however, it is impossible to promise day care centers without cutting spending elsewhere. Therefore, the ideal policy would be to focus the budget on basic education, strengthening partnerships with municipalities, while charging high-income students at public universities.
Future-se, a private funding program from public universities presented by the ministry of education, can be an excellent way out. Also, an interesting idea would be to adopt the day care voucher system, where mothers are free to choose the educational institution in the absence of places – with the government paying the tuition.
Focusing on basic education is the way out of a faster return of women to the labor market, reducing the chance of low pay.
3. Double journey reduction
According to the IBGE, inequality also extends to the domestic sphere. While men spend 10.5 hours per week on people or household care, women spend 14.1 hours. In other words, women end up working less hours away from home, reducing their salary.
Such a framework inspired feminist thinkers to come up with the concept of mental burden, which would be the psychological fatigue that women acquire by doing home planning practically on their own, while the partners only perform their tasks if the woman asks. Because of this, worry, stress and much of the execution are not shared, which contributes head-on to the double-journey phenomenon.
To address this issue, boys and girls need to be educated early on with the idea of and egalitarian division of duties and – of course – for mates to become aware of and carry out less costly domestic planning for women.
4.Egalitarian education
There is a widespread misconception that men are naturally better suited to areas of mathematical reasoning and that women would be more skilled in linguistic and social areas.
However, modern pedagogy understands that these differences in skills are much more linked to education than necessarily to a supposed biological tendency. Boys are often led to play with objects that stimulate thinking, while girls are given more static toys that encourage care, such as dolls and miniature kitchens.
A survey published by AERA Open, a scientific journal of the American Association for Educational Research, looked at 5,000 children in 1998 and over 7,500 in 2010. Conclusion, disparities in mathematics understanding begin after kindergarten entry. At first, the performance between boys and girls was equal, but after midyear boys were the majority in the best performing group, and over the years the difference only deepened.
Another finding of the study was the teachers’ responsibility for this result. Even though students had the same grades, the teachers considered the girls’ performance inferior. As research indicates, an individual’s performance is closely linked to what is expected of him; if expectations are high, their performance also tends to be high.
Summary
In the education system itself there is a negative bias that drives girls away and discourages girls from pursuing higher-paying math-related careers.
Overall, wage inequality and gender issues are complex problems for which there are no simple solutions. If, on the one hand, the left calls for immediate, ineffective, and interventionist measures (for problems that conservatives simply ignore), liberals cannot turn a blind eye to the issue simply because it is difficult to resolve within their moral standards.
We know that individuals respond to incentives. The Brazilian state is a machine for producing inequalities, creating various incentives for women to be segregated from the labor market or, when they are not, to receive less. In addition, the sexist culture that permeates our society also plays an important role in maintaining this social problem.
For us to build a freer future for women, Brazil needs to implement non-interventionist policies and popularize good practices. Such actions should be a priority for future generations.
Find the original article in Portuguese here