Discrimination in the Paulistano Labor Market

This chapter evaluates the degree of gender, racial, and national discrimination facing Paulistanos using firm-level employment records and complementary education and job evidence. By distinguishing between national groups, standard linear regressions and logit analyses demonstrate three groups faced substantial formal labor market discrimination, albeit to differing degrees and through different mechanisms. Portuguese workers were disproportionately hired into unskilled positions, Afro-Brazilians faced substantial hiring discrimination, and women faced both hiring and wage discrimination. Employers expected Portuguese workers to be unskilled and women to leave the labor market upon marriage, but Afro-Brazilians faced substantial prejudice. Hiring discrimination was consistent across the textile, commercial, railroad, and the urban transportation sectors. Prior to the war, periods of rapid growth and scarce labor supply could lessen racial prejudice and help explain the language of hope drawing Afro-Brazilians to São Paulo, but the postwar period brought a substantial contraction, making Afro-Brazilian women the most consistently excluded. Lifetime consequences of labor market discrimination were substantial, but the period saw minimal organization in opposition. One probable hypothesis explaining why more substantial mobilization did not occur was the class wage discrepancies that paled gendered, racial, and national differences.