Between sticky floors and glass ceilings: The effect of trade liberalization on double discrimination in Brazil

This article investigates how trade liberalization affects gender and racial pay inequalities in the short run. Guided by an intersectional perspective, we consider overlapping effects across gender, race, and wage levels. We exploit Brazil's trade liberalization process (1988-95) as a natural experiment. On average, liberalization increased wages of nonwhite women relative to men and white women. However, this average effect masks substantial heterogeneity. When we decompose pay gaps along the wage distribution, we find that liberalization reduced racial and gender discrimination at low wages, which mitigated preexisting "sticky floors" by gender. In contrast, at the top of the distribution, liberalization increased racial discrimination, which reinforced existing "glass ceilings" by race.