Gender Discrimination and Social Identity: Experimental Evidence from Urban Pakistan

37 Pages Posted: 9 Jan 2013

See all articles by Adeline Delavande

Adeline Delavande

Nova School of Business and Economics

Basit Zafar

Arizona State University

Date Written: January 1, 2013

Abstract

Gender discrimination in South Asia is a well-documented fact. However, gender is only one of an individual’s many identities. This paper investigates how gender discrimination depends on the social identities of interacting parties. We use an experimental approach to identify gender discrimination by randomly matching 2,836 male and female students pursuing bachelor’s-equivalent degrees in three different types of institutions — Madrassas (religious seminaries), Islamic universities, and liberal universities — that represent distinct identities within the Pakistani society. Our main finding is that gender discrimination is not uniform in intensity and nature across the educated Pakistani society and varies as a function of the social identity of both individuals who interact. While we find no evidence of higher-socioeconomic-status men discriminating against women, men of lower socioeconomic status and higher religiosity tend to discriminate against women — but only women of lower socioeconomic status who are closest to them in social distance. Moreover, this discrimination is largely taste-based. Our findings suggest that social policies aimed at empowering women need to account for the intersectionality of gender with social identity.

Keywords: trust, discrimination, expectations, identity, gender, other-regarding preferences

JEL Classification: C72, C91, J16, Z10

Suggested Citation

Delavande, Adeline and Zafar, Basit, Gender Discrimination and Social Identity: Experimental Evidence from Urban Pakistan (January 1, 2013). FRB of New York Staff Report No. 593, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2198386 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2198386

Adeline Delavande

Nova School of Business and Economics ( email )

Campus de Carcavelos
Rua da Holanda, 1
Carcavelos, 2775-405
Portugal
+35 1 21 380 16 00 (Phone)
+35 1 21 387 09 33 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://docentes.fe.unl.pt/~adeline/page2.html

Basit Zafar (Contact Author)

Arizona State University ( email )

WP Carey School of Business, ASU
Tempe, AZ 85287
United States
9179326564 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/basitakzafar/

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