Marginalization by Secrecry

More widespread use of informational asymmetries can be seen within the labor market. The gender gap in remuneration has been widely reported but one key factor that has being instrumental in its continuance has been the purposive hiding of the discrimination. This works through the effectively banning through contractual obligations, or strongly discouraging, workers from discussing their compensation.

Thus women, whose wages consistently remain below those of their male counterparts, are unaware that they personally are being discriminated against due to a lack of comparators. Kulow [1] argues that the only way of eradicating this information asymmetry is to introduce mandatory wage disclosure laws since in Norway, where this was put in place, the gender wage gap narrowed markedly.

[1] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53109/1/MPRA_paper_53109.pdf