Imitation as a social norm that influences the choice of career and labor participation of women

Abstract

In Latin America, labor market indicators still show large gender gaps in access to opportunities and rights. These inequalities persist despite various policy efforts because they emanate from a social system that reproduces stereotypes and gender roles. This contradicts the development vision of the United Nations and the ILO: “Without gender equality, sustainable development is neither development nor sustainable”. This contribution focuses on the impact of social norms on women's decisions, regarding career choice and labor participation. To this end, we have built and simulated an agent-based model. The model assumes that gender roles are acquired and reproduced through the environment that surrounds women. The results of this social simulation suggest that the environment greatly influences the perception of women about the roles they must assume and the areas in which they must play, so it is pertinent to design policies aiming to change the conceptions of identity and traditional gender roles, since the construction and adoption of new and more equitable values is in part acquired through the imitation of the behavior observed in a woman's environment.