Fairness and Wages in Mexico's Maquiladora Industry: An Empirical Analysis of Labor Demand and the Gender Wage Gap

Aurelie Charles

Review of Social Economy, 2011, vol. 69, issue 1, 1-28

Abstract: In 2001, China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the US recession put pressure on maquiladora workers' wages. The result was an increase in the gender wage gap. At the firm level, this increase is not discriminatory, in the sense that the lower income entitlement for women is socially accepted at the household level. This paper uses Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis to explain the gender wage gap as a matter of “fair-wage constraints” that differ across genders, which are, in turn, due to evolving social norms of fairness in reservation wages for men and women within households. Empirical evidence for changes in gender wages gaps across industries between 1997 and 2006 is found to be consistent with this argument.

Keywords: fairness; wages; gender; maquiladora industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760903480558 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:69:y:2011:i:1:p:1-28

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346760903480558

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().