Skala dyskryminacji kobiet zależy od wieku

Skala dyskryminacji kobiet zależy od wieku

Last month, GRAPE participated in the second conference on Discrimination and Labour Market Research organized by the University of Linnaeus in Kalmar, Sweden. The conference was great, with very fresh ideas to think about differences and an impressive display of outstanding data (which, as a side not, is common among Swedish economists). We presented our paper on the changes in the gender wage gap over the life cycle, but unlike previous conferences, we took part in the poster session.

As with other conferences, a few papers always stand out and become a reference to follow in the future. The first of them is the correspondence study presented by Neumark (the keynote speaker). His analysis indicates that elderly people should send as much as 5 more curriculums than youngsters to obtain one callback. This, still preliminary, result highlights why it is important to study gender wage gap in a life cycle perspective.

Another paper worth keeping an eye on was presented by Zouheir El-Sahli, from Lund University. They study how the introduction of new technologies affected labor market outcomes of workers. However, unlike other studies on the field, they employ worker level information and they focus on less explored technological shock: containers. the introduction of containers made redundant much of the workforce employed in loading ships; notwithstanding, their analysis suggests that the degree of unionization of those workers allowed them to prevent fast job destruction.