Högskolan i Skövde

At least according to the Swedish public debate, men and women are not treated equally. There are differences in income, employment, unemployment, carrier possibilities, but even in education opportunities, especially post graduate studies, and in medical treatment, which cannot be explained. Though one should be careful to use the expression of discrimination, when people of different sex or ethnic background are treated differently, it seems that at least in Sweden - and probably even in other European countries – income differences cannot be explained with differences in labour productivity. Therefore our first conclusion is that discrimination is existing, that people with different sex and different ethnic background are treated differently. Gary Becker, in his Economics of Discrimination, has discussed, how discrimination is influencing among other aspects the total economy, e.g. expressed in GDP (in constant prices). Based on Becker we would expect that discrimination influences the total economy negatively. In this paper, we are investigating, whether we can see signs of female discrimination, i.e. we are excluding ethnic aspects. Furthermore, we are investigating the relation or relations between female discrimination and macroeconomic performance, expressed as growth, employment, price stability, GDPpc and net exports. Macroeconomic performance will be expressed by an index. If female discrimination in Europe is existing and influences macroeconomic performance negatively, this has important implication for the Lisbon agenda, which aims at making the EU the “... the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy,...capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. If female discrimination influences macroeconomic performance negatively, and if there is female discrimination in post graduate education, then female discrimination makes it more difficult to achieve the goals of the Lisbon agenda.