进口竞争缓解了制造业性别工资歧视吗

Does Import Competition Reduce Gender Discrimination in Manufacturing

文章首次就进口竞争对我国制造业性别工资歧视的影响进行了理论分析和实证检验。理论模型表明,在同等条件下,企业主或经理人以牺牲部分利润为条件以满足其最优歧视性偏好;随着进口竞争加剧,降低了在位企业的定价能力和利润水平,使企业无法维持原来的歧视水平,因此必须降低歧视偏好、提高女性雇佣水平,进而引起劳动力市场上女性工人工资的提升。使用经典的Oaxaca工资分解法,以进口渗透率为进口竞争代理变量,在高低进口竞争样本上就两种工资基准分别进行分解,得到结果均表明,高进口竞争下的歧视系数显著低于低进口竞争下的歧视系数;进口竞争程度越高,性别工资歧视系数越低,表明进口竞争显著缓解了制造业性别工资歧视。本文认为,应进一步加大产品市场对外开放力度,持续推进国内劳动力市场一体化进程,以释放女性工人的市场价值和潜能、促进劳动力市场实现更为有效的资源配置,助力推进我国制造业实现转型升级。

This paper discusses the relationship between import competition and gender discrimination both theoretically and empirically using Chinese manufacturing data.Our model shows that the managers＇ discrimination over women workers comes at a price of losing some profit.Once there are tougher import competition,both firms＇ markup and their profits are pinning down.Then the managers cannot maintain the high level discrimination over women workers and have to increase the employment of women workers,which lead to an increasing demand over women workers and thus increase women workers＇ equilibrium wage.We employ the Oaxaca decomposition method to verify our conjecture.Using import penetration ratio as our proxy of import competition and decompose worker＇s wage using both men and women＇s wage structure,we find that higher import competition results in lower discrimination coefficient.Our results are robust and we offer some policy suggestions based on our results.