ABSTRACT
The event-related potential method has proven to be a useful tool for studying the effects of gender information in language. Studies have shown that mismatch between the antecedent and the following referent triggers two ERP components, N400 and P600. In the present study, we investigated how grammatical gender affects the mental representation of the grammatical subject. A match-mismatch paradigm was used to investigate how masculine grammatical gender and gender-balanced forms (the explicit mention of masculine and feminine forms as word pairs) as role nouns affect the processing of the referent in Slovenian. The morphological complexity of Slovenian language required the use of anaphoric verbs instead of nouns/pronouns, on which previous research was based. The results showed that following both the gender-balanced and the masculine generic forms, P600 (but not N400) was observed in response to the feminine verb but not to the masculine verb. The P600 amplitude was smaller in the case of the gender-balanced form than in the case of the masculine generic form only. We have concluded that gender-balanced forms are more open to feminine continuations than masculine generic forms. This is the first ERP study in Slovenian to address the effects of processing grammatical gender, thus contributing to existing research on languages with grammatical gender. The great strength of the study is that it is one of the first ERP studies to test the mental inclusivity of gender-balanced forms.
ABSTRACT
It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized.
