Gender

Yuan Fu

The Fairer Sex

This movie showed the differences between man and woman’s experience in the work place. In the experiment, a male and female apply for the same job, shop for the same car, the same shirt cleaned and schedule time at a public golf course, and they also have the same qualifications, such as education. The investigation revealed startling differences in their treatment.

First, the man and woman each try to buy the same car, an area of commonly understood discrimination between male and female. Supporting popular belief, the woman paid significantly more than the man. Further, the woman did not receive the opportunity to drive the car. Instead, the dealer salesman drove the car with her as the passenger. The lady, upon asking why she was not allowed to drive the car, receives the response from the dealer: “Yeah, our insurance is goofy. We figure we got a couple million dollars worth of inventory and you’re probably not real familiar with the vehicle.” Finally they talk about the price for the car the dealer said: “I can put you in it for about 94, those cars are hot right now.” Ultimately, this was the price she paid. In an apparent case of discrimination, the first offer from the same dealer to the man was $9,200. Moreover, the man was allowed to drive the car for himself. His final price was $8,900. Gender discrimination still haunts the United States today. This unfair treatment continues because contemporary males retain the idea that women are not that knowledgeable about cars. However, notions about gender are not constant over time periods. Though, economic incentives do remain the same. The dealer, working in his rational self-interest, will engage in riskier behavior that leads to greater profit because he is working on the market signals given by the woman. By being a female she signals that, on average, she does not know as much about cars. Also, further experimentation would no doubt reveal he modifies his selling points based...