Does the Gender Wage Gap Actually Reflect Taste Discrimination Against Women?

Abstract

One explanation of the gender wage gap is taste discrimination, as in Becker (1957). We test for taste discrimination by constructing a novel measure of misogyny using Google Trends data on searches that include derogatory terms for women. We find—surprisingly, in our view—that misogyny is an economically meaningful and statistically significant predictor of the wage gap. We also test more explicit implications of taste discrimination. The data are inconsistent with the Becker taste discrimination model, based on the tests used in Charles and Guryan (2008). But the data are consistent with the effects of taste discrimination against women in search models (Black, 1995), in which discrimination on the part of even a small group of misogynists can result in a wage gap.

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