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Gender: Economic Inequality

Economic Inequality and Gender

This page addresses the topic of economic inequality and provides resources and varying perspectives on the ideas. The material provided is intended for academic research and discussion. 

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Perspectives

Inequality: What Can Be Done?

Winner of the Richard A. Lester Award for the Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University An Economist Best Economics and Business Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year Inequality is one of our most urgent social problems. Curbed in the decades after World War II, it has recently returned with a vengeance. We all know the scale of the problem--talk about the 99% and the 1% is entrenched in public debate--but there has been little discussion of what we can do but despair. According to the distinguished economist Anthony Atkinson, however, we can do much more than skeptics imagine. "[Atkinson] sets forth a list of concrete, innovative, and persuasive proposals meant to show that alternatives still exist, that the battle for social progress and equality must reclaim its legitimacy, here and now... Witty, elegant, profound, this book should be read." --Thomas Piketty, New York Review of Books "An uncomfortable affront to our reigning triumphalists. [Atkinson's] premise is straightforward: inequality is not unavoidable, a fact of life like the weather, but the product of conscious human behavior. --Owen Jones, The Guardian

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

"A persuasive and highly readable account." --President Barack Obama "Brilliant. . . . an important, fascinating read arguing that inequality creates a public health crisis in America." --Nicholas Kristof, New York Times "The Broken Ladder is an important, timely, and beautifully written account of how inequality affects us all." --Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink A timely examination by a leading scientist of the physical, psychological, and moral effects of inequality.  The levels of inequality in the world today are on a scale that have not been seen in our lifetimes, yet the disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means. In The Broken Ladder psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically; it also has profound consequences for how we think, how we respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and even how we view moral concepts such as justice and fairness. Research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics has not only revealed important new insights into how inequality changes people in predictable ways but also provided a corrective to the flawed view of poverty as being the result of individual character failings. Among modern developed societies, inequality is not primarily a matter of the actual amount of money people have. It is, rather, people's sense of where they stand in relation to others. Feeling poor matters--not just being poor. Regardless of their average incomes, countries or states with greater levels of income inequality have much higher rates of all the social maladies we associate with poverty, including lower than average life expectancies, serious health problems, mental illness, and crime.   The Broken Ladder explores such issues as why women in poor societies often have more children, and why they have them at a younger a≥ why there is little trust among the working class in the prudence of investing for the future; why people's perception of their social status affects their political beliefs and leads to greater political divisions; how poverty raises stress levels as effectively as actual physical threats; how inequality in the workplace affects performance; and why unequal societies tend to become more religious. Understanding how inequality shapes our world can help us better understand what drives ideological divides, why high inequality makes the middle class feel left behind, and how to disconnect from the endless treadmill of social comparison.

Selling Women Short

Rocked by a flurry of high-profile sex discrimination lawsuits in the 1990s, Wall Street was supposed to have cleaned up its act. It hasn't. Selling Women Short is a powerful new indictment of how America's financial capital has swept enduring discriminatory practices under the rug. Wall Street is supposed to be a citadel of pure economics, paying for performance and evaluating performance objectively. People with similar qualifications and performance should receive similar pay, regardless of gender. They don't. Comparing the experiences of men and women who began their careers on Wall Street in the late 1990s, Louise Roth finds not only that women earn an average of 29 percent less but also that they are shunted into less lucrative career paths, are not promoted, and are denied the best clients. Selling Women Short reveals the subtle structural discrimination that occurs when the unconscious biases of managers, coworkers, and clients influence performance evaluations, work distribution, and pay. In their own words, Wall Street workers describe how factors such as the preference to associate with those of the same gender contribute to systematic inequality. Revealing how the very systems that Wall Street established ostensibly to combat discrimination promote inequality, Selling Women Short closes with Roth's frank advice on how to tackle the problem, from introducing more tangible performance criteria to curbing gender-stereotypical client entertaining activities. Above all, firms could stop pretending that market forces lead to fair and unbiased outcomes. They don't.

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