Gender Dualism between Platitudes and Half-Truths

In modern economic systems, discrimination – and the resulting allocative inefficiency – occurs when “individuals with the same economic characteristics receive different wages and the differences are systematically correlated with certain non-economic characteristics of the individual” (Stiglitz, 1973). A significant example of this is occupational segregation: the gender stereotypes from which it originates reduce the efficiency of the economic system and the prospects for development, determining, on the one hand, under-utilization of the female workforce and, on the other, a distortion in the investment in human capital. Female employment remains more concentrated in precarious, low-skilled, and therefore low-paid jobs. This depends not only on the glass ceiling (which hinders the careers of professional women) but also on a greater inequality among women themselves, between high-skilled and low-skilled workers. It entails the risk of producing feedback effects that not only perpetuate the gender gap but feed, within the female population, the same dynamics found between men and women.