书摘--Ch. 2 Economics of Gender

<Standard Economic Models>
1. Attitudes Towards Risk, Competition, and Negotiation
Eckel and Grossman (2008) and Croson and Gneezy (2009) both report the same conclusion on women’s risk aversion compared to that of men. One implication of women’s risk aversion is that women tend to be more reluctant to take a job with a higher level of risk than men; otherwise, women require compensation to accept the risk. Yet women in managerial positions are the exception to the rule. Women managers demonstrate similar risk propensity and make decisions of equal quality to men (Johnson & Powell, 1994). A recent study by Zhang and colleagues (2016) also confirms the former study. They show that in China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs), there are no significant differences in risk preference between men and women managers.
In addition to staying away from competition, women may also underperform men in a competitive environment (Bertrand, 2011).
Studies conducted in different regions further suggest that although gendered attitudes towards competition tend to be universal, they are likely to be affected by the local context.
Gneezy and colleagues (2009) study two regions in India that are characterized by male-dominated and female-dominated cultures, respectively. The results show that women in male-dominated cultures are less willing to engage in competitive environments than women in female-dominated cultures.
2. Personality Traits
Among the five personality traits, the difference in agreeableness between women and men is a major contributor to the gender earnings gap, whereas openness has no major gendered effect.
3. Discrimination
<Explaining the Identity Model (Akerlof & Kranton (2000))>
In short, identification is a dynamic process that involves not only an individual’s own actions but also the actions of all other individuals in the society.
In general, the implications of the model can be summarized in two major points. First, it suggests people will act according to the behavior that is expected of their social category. Second, a person’s utility will be influenced by the actions of all other individuals.
With regard to labor force participation, considering a situation with a strong statement that “women should work inside the home, men should work outside the home”, it is predictable that women are likely to engage in work inside the home to avoid loss of utility. In contrast, men should participate in the labor force to maintain their social identity.
The internalization process not only implies an individual’s rationality to act according to the behavioral prescriptions of the assignable gender group but also implies the externality of one individual’s behavior on other individuals. Externality, in this case, marks the second aspect of change from the standard economic approaches. More explicitly, externality highlights that one individual’s behavior not only will affect other individuals but others’ responses will, in return, have an impact on the person’s behavior.
For instance, studies have revealed the intergenerational dynamics of prescriptive gender stereotypes which can transmit across generations within a family, namely from parents to children (e.g. Brenøe, 2018; Hallers-Haalboom etal., 2014; Farré & Vella, 2013).
<Gender Performativity>
In the performativity framework, the basic idea is that individuals are not born into a gender but gender is a performance of repeated actions.
gender attributes are expressions of gender identity, which are the performances of bodily actions or styles.
The economics of identity provides an economic rationale for the frst critical implication of performativity theory: gender norms not only can be produced by repeated acts but can also be maintained through continual repetitive acts.
According to the identity model, man A will respond to B’s deviation by staying away from Action Two and continue to perform Action One, despite the possible cost of doing so. From man B’s perspective, man A’s response to not wear a dress also creates anxiety for him, such that he will continue to wear a dress to defend against this anxiety. The externality of one individual’s action on another individual predicts that the behavioral gap between the two individuals is difficult to overcome. This externality pinpoints two implications of the performativity framework.
an individual’s gender identity is not only determined by repeated acts but also is an outcome chosen by an individual to maximize their economic well-being.
<Conclusion>
In studying gender, standard frameworks of human capital, psychological traits, and discrimination commonly assume what men and women typically do (or how they typically are) based on the aggregate distribution of a trait or skill in the gender group. They rely solely on this assumption to provide information to predict what the typical man or typical woman will do (or how they will be) but fail to take into account the broader social context and the interactions of individuals.
the results suggest that gender is not merely a result of a person’s repeated performative acts but also their economic decision.