The Dynamics of Inequity

Cailin O'Connor

Abstract: It is no secret that some people get more and others get less. In most societies, seemingly irrelevant personal factors like gender and race importantly determine patterns of resource distribution. In this talk, I will use social models to explain the ubiquity of such patterns. As I will argue, in a bargaining population, the simple addition of a social category like gender or race completely changes the expected cultural evolutionary outcomes by breaking symmetry between actors in the group. I will explore the conditions under which members of one category are expected to end up disadvantaged in these models, including minority status, power imbalances, and asymmetries in social networking.