İşgücü Piyasasında Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitsizliği ve Gelir Dağılımı

Abstract

How the income created in the market economy will be divided among the factors participating in production or individuals, the effects of this distribution on the economic system and whether it is fair or not has been a subject discussed throughout the economic discipline. In these discussions, the shift of the analysis unit from the social classes based on the ownership of production factors to the individual created a wider ground for discussion of the dynamics in the labor market. Thus, the effects of gender-based discrimination in the labor market became more visible. However, this visibility has been realized to the extent permitted by the definition of discrimination in the mainstream economic approach. In the face of the narrow and abstractive approach of mainstream economics, the feminist approach has presented a more holistic and comprehensive perspective on the nature and nature of discrimination by introducing gender analysis. In this study, where the feminist approach is the starting point, the disadvantaged position of women in the labor market and discrimination against women in the labor market are read as gender-based discrimination / inequality. In this context, the effect of gender inequality on the individual income distribution in the labor market is investigated through the wage-salary inequality. For this purpose, quantile regression and Machado-Mata decompositon method were used.

According to the results obtained from full-time employees in Turkey's labor market, wage-salary distribution to low income women than men throughout and stems from discrimination based on gender, a significant portion of it. The strongest inequality between women and men occurred in the lower regions of the distribution, namely among the relatively lower income labor force. This indicates a sticky floor effect between women and men working full time.

Decompositon methods investigating the effects of gender-based discrimination in the labor market present important findings, but the impact of the mainstream economic approach narrows the field of these findings. In these analyzes, the inequalities created by the gender-based division of labor are excluded from the analysis, in other words, it is not an “issue”. However, this perspective on gender is a general trend in the discipline of economics. In this context, the findings of the empirical model applied and questioning of the gender perspective of the theoretical approach that determines the conceptual limits of these analyzes is presented together.