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Gender and Inequality in the Workplace: Lessons from Institutional and Marxist-Feminist Perspectives

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

Abstract

Gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace are pertinent issues in the contemporary labor markets across the developed and developing world. The aim of this chapter is to outline two frameworks, namely, Williamson’s New Institutional Economics (NIE) framework and the Marxist-Feminist framework of social reproduction as well as their historical roots, which allow the conceptualization of gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace from a structural perspective. The root causes of these forms of discrimination and inequality are allocated to the wider social context of either (i) different formal and informal institutional settings in the case of the NIE framework or (ii) the exploitation and alienation within the capitalist mode of production. The chapter outlines the relevant methodological principles inherent in these two frameworks to illustrate, with reference to relevant literature, how these can help the interested reader in guiding and conceptualizing his or her research. Where relevant, the chapter supports the theoretical assertions with empirical research and practical examples of gender discrimination in the workplace, which helps us to formulate preliminary policy implications. The chapter closes with a summary of the distinct advantages of the two frameworks and, in the light of these different advantages, a call for methodological pluralism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The authors would like to thank Dr. Danielle Guizzo Archela, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England; Dr. Lucy Delap, Reader in Modern British and Gender History at University of Cambridge; Prof. Geoffrey Hodgson, Professor in Management at Loughborough University London campus; and Prof Chris Land, Professor of Work and Organisation and Deputy Dean (Research and Innovation) in the Faculty of Business and Law at Anglia Ruskin University for their recommendations and helpful comments on the first drafts.

  2. 2.

    Rutherford (1999) and Yonay (1994, 1998) detail the debates between institutionalists and neoclassicists of the 1920s and 1930s around the scientific validity of their respected approaches, in other words which one of them counts as “modern science.” Whereas the intensity of these debates was at their height in the interwar period, the directions of these two schools were already argued for much earlier. As one of the early founders of Institutional Economics, Thorstein Veblen (1898) wrote that the basis for modern economics should be an evolutionary approach, while for Francis Edgeworth (1881, p. v), the analogy must be drawn “between the Principles of Greatest Happiness (…) and those Principles of Maximum Energy (…) [in] which mathematical reasoning is applicable to physical phenomena quite as complex as human life.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Finance and Law, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Imko Meyenburg

  2. School of Management, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Sandra Selmanovic

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  1. Imko Meyenburg
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Correspondence to Imko Meyenburg .

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  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. School of Economics and International Business, Centre for Pluralist Economics, Faculty of Business and Law, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  2. University of Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  3. Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  4. Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany

    Nick Drydakis

  5. Global Labor Organization, Essen, Germany

    Nick Drydakis

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Meyenburg, I., Selmanovic, S. (2020). Gender and Inequality in the Workplace: Lessons from Institutional and Marxist-Feminist Perspectives. In: Zimmermann, K. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_39-1

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