ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the Becker model in some detail, along with a feminist rendition of the argument from Heidi Hartmann. It discusses how discrimination may continue to exist even in the face of the type of free market processes Becker documents. The chapter considers not only situations in which Gary Becker’s assumptions are violated, but also those where his assumptions apply with full force. Becker, in his Economics of Discrimination, argued that the free market has the capacity to eliminate discrimination. The entire dilemma posed by Becker and Hartmann’s work is that left to its own dynamics, the free market has the potential to eliminate any form of discrimination. Becker’s free market/taste for discrimination formulation is relatively fragile. The only case where a free market could tolerate discrimination is when everybody discriminates without exception. Buffering from competition refers to the presence of some force that protects the firm from the unimpeded pressures of the free market.
