Gender Inequality


Blog post 6 Kiki He

     Unlike Shiller who uses a rather sentimental and emotional way to introduce his view of the current economic system and professions, Chang uses a very straightforward and provocative approach to express his disagreement on the free market. 
     One aspect he mentions in Thing 3: Most people in rich countries are paid more than they should be is about income inequality. As briefly mentioned in Oscar’s presentation as well, we still have a long way to go to eliminate the income gap that is purely due to unequal treatment between women and men with same working capability. This reminds me of an academic article I recently read for my econometrics class. The article studies the income gap between female uber drivers and male uber drivers. When we think about uber drivers or other types of jobs in today's gig economy, we tend to think that these jobs are fair enough for both male and female workers since it is the individuals that decide when to work, where to work and how to work. We would normally assume that these jobs are not gender biased. However, the study shows that the charging system that determines how much drivers can get is indeed in favor of male other than women. Uber gives the drivers more when the trip is long. And it is not hard to understand that male driver would prefer to drive a customer from South Bend to Chicago than female drivers. Also, Uber gives drivers additional bonus when the driver reaches a specific number of orders before a scheduled time. This policy is in favor of drivers who driver faster, and men do drive faster than women out of many reasons. Additionally, trips at weird time periods such as 4 am are more expensive than usual, and men are more likely to choose to work at such a strange working time. 
     All these standards of charging have gender preferences, indirectly helping men to earn more than women do. In this case, women’s attentiveness, patience, and safety consideration actually become the disadvantage that hinders them from getting the bonus and earning more. 
     In fact, we have so many similar real-life cases. While the inequality is not caused intentionally by those companies, the free market itself has so many gender-based preferences since it’s all about demand and supply. 

     It is really hard to eliminate the income inequality between female and male in free markets. And after reading Lean in by Sheryl Sandberg, I agree with her point of having more female in power would be one of the best ways to realize gender equality.

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