The Long‐run Effects of the Sex Integration of the British Labour Market

Abstract

This article examines the possible long‐run effects of the Sex Discrimination Act upon output, male wages and female wages after the hypothetical abolition of occupational differentials between men and women in Britain. If male and female employment distributions were equalised on the assumption that men and women had the same productive characteristics and no employers' discrimination were allowed, then the movement of female workers from low‐paid to high‐paid occupations should result in efficiency gains and an increase in female wages probably at low losses to male wages. The findings of our simulations indicate that the improvement in female wages would be considerable at little cost to male wages. Efficiency gains are found to depend crucially on the assumed elasticity of substitution between female and male labour, but it is more likely that gains would be much higher than those suggested by other related studies on the misallocation of labour. This should not be a surprise because women are the largest “minority” group and are also the most underutilised factor of production.