Academic literature on the topic 'Sociology and Economics / Latin America - Development / Latin America - Social and Economical Conditions'

Purpose This study aims to examine gender differences in risk-taking and prosociality through a hypothetical labour market entry choice experiment. Design/methodology/approach To explore differences between male and female subjects by risk levels and framing effects, a labour market entry choice task that manipulated risk conditions was administered to business school students whereby subjects chose between a managerial job at a company, starting a commercial business or starting a social enterprise. The experimental design isolated and tested the influence of the type of value creation, risk propensity and framing effects. The results were then statistically analysed to test for significant differences between the two gender groups. Findings Results indicate that in low-risk conditions women prefer the prosocial entrepreneurial option while men opt for purely commercial entrepreneurial activities. As risk increases, differences between men and women initially converge and then reverse under conditions of extreme risk, where men select the social entrepreneurial choice at a higher rate than women. Research limitations/implications The research was conducted within the single country context of Peru and carried out using a specific subset of potential entrepreneurs (i.e. business school students). Second and related, the experimental labour entry task was hypothetical. Whether decisions would hold if business school students faced an actual occupational choice remains open to further investigation. Practical implications The practical implication of the paper suggests that Peruvian business school students react differently towards potential labour market opportunities depending on their gender. Perhaps, because of gender biases common in the Latin American context, women appear to respond more positively to low-risk prosocial opportunities. However, as risk increases, contextual factors appear to become less important and reveal core sets of prosocially anchored men and commercially anchored women. Originality/value This research provides new insights into risk-taking and prosocial differences between men and women facing labour entry decisions, especially in a developing country context with strong gender norms, and is particularly useful to those with an interest in entrepreneurial propensity and in the identification and development of entrepreneurial women.

AbstractThe article aims to analyse gender segregation in the labour market while comparing two national contexts in Europe and Latin America. Specifically, it will consider the growth trends of female employment in the last 25 years (1992–2017), its distribution between activity sectors and occupations, and the gender pay gap. Feminization models and gender inequalities are framed within labour market segmentation theories, which are in partial contrast to human capital theories and neoclassical economics. The initial hypothesis is that the gender distribution of occupations measured by a segregation index is similar in Italy and Chile, despite significant differences in the socio-economic and institutional contexts. Through this intercontinental comparison, the article intends to shed light on women’s labour market conditions and segregation patterns, which are multidimensional and generalizable (transcontinental) phenomena, connected to the unequal division of labour in the new post-industrial order.

When analyzing the state of Latin American cities, particularly large ones like Buenos Aires, São Paolo and Riode Janeiro, scholars of urbanism and sociology often lean heavily on the term “fragmentation.” Through the 1980s and 1990s, the term was quickly and widely adopted to describe the widespread state of abutment between seemingly disparate urban conditions that purportedly prevented Latin American cities from developing into cohesive wholes and instead produced cities in pieces, fragments. This term, “fragmentation,” along with the idea of a city composed of mismatching parts, was central to the conception of Buenos Aires by its citizens and immortalized by the fiction of Esteban Echeverría, Julio Cortázar and César Aira. The idea that Buenos Aires is composed of discrete parts has been used throughout its history to either proactively enable or retroactively justify planning decisions by governments on both ends of the political spectrum. The 1950s and 60s saw a series of governments whose priorities lay in controlling the many newcomers to the city via large housing projects. Aided by the perception of the city as fragmented, they were able to build monster-scale developments in the parts of the city that were seen as “apart.” Later, as neoliberal democracy replaced socialist and populist leadership, commercial centers in the center of the city were built as shrines to an idealized Parisian downtown, separate from the rest of the city. The observations by scholars of the city that Buenos Aires is composed of multiple discrete parts, whether they be physical, economic or social, is accurate. However, the issue here lies not in the accuracy of the assessment but in the word chosen to describe it. The word fragmentation implies that there was a “whole” at once point, a complete entity that could be then broken into pieces, fragments. Its current usage also implies that this is a natural process, out of the hands of both planners and inhabitants. Leaning on the work of Adrián Gorelik, Pedro Pírez and Marie-France Prévôt-Schapira, and utilizing popular fiction to supplement an understanding of the urban experience, I argue that fragmentation, more than a naturally occurring phenomenon, is a fabricated concept that has been used throughout the twentieth century and through today to make all kinds of urban planning projects possible.