The self-fulfilling prophecy in statistical gender discrimination: Its basic mechanism and the effects of diversity policies

Abstract

In this study, I aim to clarify the social mechanism of the self-fulfilling prophecy in statistical discrimination against women that female applicants are confronted with in their job searches. The analyses using a simple formal model reveal the following result: In a society where workers cannot achieve work-life balance, so much so that dual-career families have lower well-being than single-earner families, if the ratio of job openings to applicants is less than one, then employers' statistical discrimination based on the belief that women are more likely than men to give up their careers consequently causes the probability of women' s early retirement to be higher than that of men's retirement, which eventually reproduces the statistical fact that women's turnover is higher than men's. Next, on the basis of this result, I try to specify the socio-economic factors that make employers choose the equal treatment of men and women, rather than discriminatory treatments. By considering the meaning of these factors, we can clearly understand how diversity policies such as the improvement of work-life balance and the implementation of work-sharing can stop the repetition of statistical discrimination.