>Of course, an alternative explantion is that increased competition may hurt
>men relative to women. Gender gap may be narrowed by either increasing the
>wages of women or decreasing wages of men, I the authors do not indicate
>that they accounted for which of these two led to the reduction of gender gap.
>
>I find it rather hard to belive that international competition created an
>upward pressure on female wages - a more believable story is that it
>created a downward pressure on wages, which has been implemented through
>feminization of workforce (see, for example Reskin and Roos, _Job cues,
>gender cues_ who describe the effect of feminization of "traditionally"
>male occupations on wages).
>
>But in the topsy-turvy world of economics, hey - everything is a success
>story, as long as happens in the US of A and it does not smack of government.
Ha yes, ain't that the truth. Yeah, I thought the (slowly) shrinking gender gap was the result of falling male real wages and rising female. But I haven't read this paper yet.
Doug