Gender rationality and inequalities in Paraguay

Abstract

Rationality in the economic literature is valued in such a way that individual decisions start from this premise. However, what seems to affect only one science, has a multiplicity of effects on the different edges of life, and the economic view overlaps with approaches from other disciplines of the social sciences. The Ultimate Problem of Rationality (Sen, 1986; Sen, 1987), is that life takes place in what the positivist economy understands as market failures, so perhaps the hegemonic economic system itself presents black holes in the different crises that the capitalist model had (and has) since its appearance with the industrial revolution. Becker (1985), when analyzing the theory of human capital, argues that women by rational choice, decide to train less, due to their biological role of reproduction, which produces a natural segregation of the female labor market, towards temporary, atypical, low-skilled, and low-paid jobs. Faced with this affirmation of neoclassical theory, critical theory arises from the current of feminist economics that adds that this economic vision is based on an androcentric bias in the discourse (Pérez Orozco, 2006). Patriarchal families subordinated domestic, reproductive or care work to women, which conditioned the sexual division of labor, creating a barrier to entry for women to the labor market (McConnell, Brue and Macpherson, 2003; Pérez Orozco, 2006; Esquivel, 2011). This work that addresses the rationality perspective from the gender point of view, starting from the documentary-bibliographic review, supported with statistical data from official sources, using the SPSS statistical package. The results show that what is called rationality is conditioned by cultural factors added to the scarce opportunities, both for education and care services, which affect individual decisions within the vision of progress and more orthodox development. However, the position of the sciences on what is considered rational choice is questionable because decisions should be free, not questionable or forced towards any reasoning scheme, but this paradigm requires dynamic responses from the social sciences (theory and practice) that are not always at the forefront of human needs.