Évf. 2020 szám 2: „The Shard” – one possible model of discrimination of women

Zsuzsanna Kispál-Vitai, Julianna Németh

It is almost a cliché in social sciences today to do gender research. Researchers did exhaustive
investigations about the gender wage gap, career, and developmental prospects. The available
data about women’s progress (or rather the lack of it) at the workplace is overwhelming, but
these are mostly descriptive. Though these presented a comprehensive picture of the
phenomenon, they did not provide the reasons for discrimination, only clarified the symptoms.
Our article aims to create a new framework utilizing existing data. We suggest a new model
that has explanatory value and attempt to present the reasons for the treatment of women. Our
theoretical model focuses on decision-making. Our conclusion is – based on prototype
heuristics and bounded rationality – that four factors influence decision-making about women
in the workplace: cognitive development of the individual, societal expectations, power
demands, and accessible data in the environment. Exploring these can contribute to the
improvement of women progressing to higher-level jobs by uncovering the reasons for
discrimination.

Keywords: discrimination, psychological factors in people’s judgment, decision theory