A Growth Model with Gender Inequality in Employment, Human Capital, and Socio-Political Participation

This paper proposes an endogenous growth model in which gender inequality in employment has an important role in explaining different development dimensions such as socio-political participation, educational attainments, and working hours, in developed countries. Starting from a theoretical framework à la Lucas, we model the decision to participate in determining a society’s values as a game in which the existence of gender inequalities in the labor market may affect the time spent by men and women in social activities. Although we assume gender inequality and population growth to be exogenous factors, relationships among our main variables become extremely complex. Our model’s predictions are in line with some stylized facts observed in developed economies, in particular across the European regions: more equal societies have higher socio-political participation, devote less time to work, and present higher educational attainments and rates of economic growth than less equal ones. Our model’s main policy implications are immediate: political interventions designed to promote female employment must be accompanied by pro-family policies in order to sustain economic growth and improve quality of life, by reducing time for work and increasing time for other activities.