WORK

Nearly one in two Harvard undergraduates will have taken Ec 10 before he or she graduates. Year after year the Faculty's largest course, this elementary economics class spends hours upon hours extolling the virtues of the competitive marketplace.

But when you get past the introductory theory, say some economics scholars, you may find that Ec 10's neoclassical model doesn't always pan out.

In today's world, where market forces meet the social and political environment, economists at Harvard and elsewhere say they are increasingly looking to other disciplines to understand the impact of modern society on traditional theory.

In labor economics, for instance, discrimination in the workplace and other historical factors have spurred many economists to ask how gender influences market forces.

"Discrimination is not efficient economics," explains one undergraduate Ec concentrator, Hernan Saenz III '92. In the ideal world of modern economics, Saenz says, men and women of the same ability should receive the same compensation.

"On the average, a male of the same ability as a female gets paid 27 to 39 percent more," says Saenz, who is also a research assistant to the Harvard Institute of Economic Research and the Harvard Institute of International Development. "Neoclassical theory does not expect this."

Changing Questions

Reconciling economic theory with the actual marketplace has become particularly important for scholars in their role as public policy makers. And although economists have been studying women in the workplace for some time, some professors say the direction of this research is shifting.

The main thrust of gender applications in labor economics research in the past has looked at the effects of working women on families, says Alice Kessler-Harris, professor of history and director of women's studies at Rutgers University.

"As women move more into jobs men do, questions will change," says Kessler-Harris. "Questions of autonomy, independence, and wage will become more important."

Kessler-Harris's most recent work, Women Out to Work, examines the integration of women in the labor force and its consequences for women from colonial times to the present.

"It is ironic that the most conservative of the social sciences has had women as subjects in research for a very long time," says Professor of Economics Claudia D. Goldin, Harvard's first and only senior women in the field.

For the past 10 years, the study of gender has become accepted as a legitimate topic of scholarship for both male and female professors. But economics scholars say that as long as women have been in the labor force, economists have been studying gender.

Goldin says that gender has been of interest to economists since the 19th century. Yet many economists say changes in the labor force since World War II--when many women took on traditionally male jobs to replace soldiers sent abroad--sparked a closer look at the role of women and men in the workplace.

Gender Stereotypes

Despite shifts in the labor force, many stereotypes about gender roles in marriage and childcare still remain, scholars say. And it is these stereotypes that have shaped women's wage-earning capabilities, often leading to discrimination.

Victor R. Fuchs, an economist at Stanford University, says traditional expectations that women will marry and bear children have created gender-specific wage scales. This means, Fuchs says in his book, Women's Quest for Economic Equality, that married women earn less than their male counterparts and less than unmarried women as well.

Fuchs's interest in gender stems from his fascination with family economics, he says. Fuchs is presently researching a new book that tries to explain how working women handle childcare responsibilities.

"There has been a deterioration in the physical and emotional health of children," says Fuchs. "It is caught up in some way with the failure to resolve the gender issue. The fundamental problem is to deal with the problem in an egalitarian context without short-changing the children."

Fuchs says a return to the 1950s middle-class model, with women confined to childcare and household responsibilities, is not a solution. Instead, he says, public policy must address these issues.

In Women's Quest for Economic Equality, Fuchs recommends policies that address children's needs and attempt to equalize women's positions in the workforce. He recommended parental leave programs, financial incentives and subsidized childcare on a national level.

Fuchs's scholarship looks particularly at women in relation to their position in family life. Other economists studying gender, however, have begun to look at women as individuals apart from the family structure and, more specifically, at issues of discrimination.

Comparable Worth

For some scholars, the failure of economic theory to explain existing discrimination has unleashed a debate about comparable worth--the notion that all workers should be paid the same salary for jobs that are comparably similar in expertise, importance and rank.

James L. Medoff, one of Harvard's leading labor economists and Kestnbaum professor of labor and industry, says many companies are now facing this issue as they formulate policies and confront discrimination complaints.

Medoff, who recently wrote a book comparing small and large businesses, often consults with companies on labor issues. But comparable worth, he says, is not an issue that can be easily resolved because it would require large-scale government legislation.

Because discrimination extends beyond economics into the sphere of social and cultural life, offering solutions to the problem can prove difficult for the labor economist. The complexity of the issue may even deter scholars from tackling problems of gender on the policy level.

"Our culture discriminates against women, but the sociological and cultural phenomenon is reflected in the economy," Saenz says. "Research in gender can lead nowhere. It can offer no solution except that culture must change. One needs to move out of economics to sociology, and this poses a problem for economists."

To solve something like gender discrimination, says Saenz, requires more than economic tools.

Policy-Making

For many economists, tackling these kinds of public policy issues makes their work both exciting and potentially powerful.

Lee Professor of Economics Hendrik S. Houthakker says given the public policy applications for gender-related research, many scholars have become increasingly interested in the field.

"Interest is coming from current policy-making," Houthakker says. "Economic research is responding to government policy-making."

Fuchs says he sees two sides to the gender issue in labor economic research. There is an analytical interest and a policy interest for scholars. "Analytically, we want to know why discrimination occurs," he says. "The policy interest is to try to make an egalitarian society."

But Medoff downplays the interest in gender-related economics, saying many scholars find its lack of empirical data frustrating. Economists, Medoff says, find they cannot gauge productivity accurately and thus cannot effectively compare men's and women's labor.

It is this kind of complexity that for some economists makes the study of gender in economics particularly interesting, says Harvard's Goldin, who recently wrote a book about the role of women in the labor force during the 19th century.

Women workers face a range of choices and responsibilities that men do not, says Goldin, citing childbearing in particular.

Although Harvard's labor economists say they all agree that gender is an important issue, they disagree over its place in research.

Some professors, like Harvard's Houthakker, say that labor economics encompasses many issues and to focus on one is unrealistic. Other scholars say that the complexity of the gender issue makes it too daunting for researchers to tackle.

"There are lots of problems that also belong to labor economics," says Houthakker. "To make gender issue central as feminists would like is preposterous. There are so many other things to worry about."

But other scholars say that gender is an essential issue because it affords valuable information about society. Medoff says that labor economists study gender to understand what social forces shape men and women in the workplace.

And by assessing the socialization of the sexes, the labor economists can evaluate pay differentials and ultimately discrimination.

"The pay differential is huge," Medoff says. "Men hold higher paying jobs, and women lower paying jobs. The question is, are men and women being socialized to do certain jobs, so they end up where they want to be? Or are they being channeled by employers to different jobs?"

The Field

At first glance, women labor economists appear to dominate the study of gender, as women do in women's studies. But labor economists say that appearances can be misleading.

Given the small number of women in economics, proportionally more female labor economists study gender than male labor scholars do, say some professors. They say that it is logical that women are more attracted to gender issues, appearing to dominate the field.

"Women are more likely to be interested about women issues," says Medoff. "That's not a bad thing, but there are some exceptions." Medoff also says that perhaps more women write on the subject than men because the public prefers women to write on women.

But, says Saenz, economists who study the labor force must necessarily--whether they are male or female--deal with gender issues, especially as they continue to shape economic factors and public policy.

"The fact that women can identify with the subject should not be used as an excuse by male economics researchers," says the undergraduate, who works closely with Medoff. "In order for discrimination to be solved, we need all researchers to look at it."