Gendering Growth Models

Pauline Kohlhase

Gender inequality is an ongoing issue in capitalist societies. While research has explored gender inequalities as individual-level differences, less is known about how the contemporary political economic setting of advanced economies interrelates with gender inequality. This project studies gender inequality in a comparative political economy framework based on growth model typology and in the context of the different contributions men and women make to aggregate demand and productivity growth. The first part of the project introduces social reproduction, for instance caring, into growth model theory and analyzes the input of social reproduction into major sources of aggregate demand and key economic sectors. In the second, it studies the effect of national variations in productivity outcomes on wage differentials across sectors. The third part analyzes gender wage gaps by studying the effect of gender on wage mediated by sectoral gender segregation and moderated by national growth models.