Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
DOI 10.1007/s11199-012-0165-z
FEMINIST FORUM
The Gender Pay Gap: Challenging the Rationalizations. Perceived
Equity, Discrimination, and the Limits of Human Capital Models
Hilary M. Lips
Published online: 26 April 2012
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract A gender gap in earnings has proven both
persistent and universal. This paper relies mainly on
U.S. data, but a gap between women’s and men’s earn-
ings exists in every country. There is a continuing debate
as to the extent to which the gap reflects merely the
inevitable and reasonably fair result of differing work
patterns and behaviors by women and men or the impact
of employment discrimination against women. The hu-
man capital approach, in which various explanatory var-
iables are used to shrink the perceived size of the gap, is
often used to argue that much of the gap is due, not to
discrimination, but to differing investments in employ-
ment by women and men. However, neither “invest-
ments” nor “outcomes” can be assessed in gender-
neutral ways and the model’s underlying notion of
rational choices made against the backdrop of a gender-
neutral playing field is flawed. Discrimination appears to
be entwined with gendered work patterns and behaviors;
many of the human capital “explanatory” variables them-
selves require explanation. Understanding the gap
requires recognition of the limitations of human capital
models, and a willingness both to take a more sophisti-
cated approach to such models, and to think beyond this
approach.
Keywords Gender . Employment . Discrimination . Gender
pay gap
H. M. Lips (*)
Department of Psychology, Radford University,
Box 6946, Radford, VA 24142, USA
e-mail: hlips@radford.edu
Introduction
Median annual earnings of women fulltime workers in the
United States are currently reported to be 75.7 % of men’s
earnings (U.S. Census Bureau 2011a, Table 36). Although this
represents an improvement over the 64.5 % of men’s earnings
paid to women in the mid-1950s, in recent years the number
has fluctuated little from a percentile in the high 70s, and the
significant remaining gap stubbornly refuses to close. The
situation is similar in other countries. Women in Europe earned
an average of 82 % as much as men in 2008 (Eurostat 2010). In
Australia, one recent study indicated that women’s 2010 earn-
ings were 82 % of those of their male counterparts (“Gender
pay gap getting worse, not better: Australian study” 2010). In
Canada, among all workers (part-time and full-time), women’s
earnings averaged only 64.5 % of men’s in 2008 (Statistics
Canada 2010), and in the United Kingdom, full-time women
workers earned 89.8 % of comparable men’s hourly earnings;
among all workers, women’s earnings were 80.2 % of men’s
in 2010 (Office for National Statistics 2010a). Across all
industrialized countries, the Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development reported recently that women’s
median full-time earnings were 82.4 % of men’s (Rampell
2010). Earnings statistics for 150 countries worldwide show
that, without exception, women’s earnings lag behind those
of men (United Nations Development Program 2009).
Whereas the statistics available for different countries are
not strictly comparable, they are presented here to illustrate
the universality of the problem.
Debate continues to swirl, not only around the size of the
gap, but around whether the gap is unfair or fair: whether it
reflects discrimination visited on women or simply differ-
ences in human capital “investments” that women and men
bring to the workplace. In this debate, there is a concern,
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implicitly grounded in the tenets of an equity-based ap-
proach to distributive justice, with finding the correct,
gender-neutral way to measure equal units of input from
women and men so we can fairly assess whether their out-
comes (in terms of pay) are equivalent.
This paper reviews and analyzes the major conceptual
and technical issues implicit in the human capital model—
the model often used as a framework for explaining and
rationalizing the gender pay gap. I begin with an overview
of the assumptions, built into the model, that objective,
gender-neutral measures of investments and outcomes can
be identified and applied to understanding the gender pay
gap. Next, I turn to an analysis of the outcomes side of the
model: how is pay best measured, and do the measures we
choose have implications for the perceived size of the gap?
This is followed by an examination of the input side of the
model: what variables should be considered as relevant
investments when comparing the pay of women and men,
and are women and men rewarded similarly for similar
levels of investment? Finally, I turn to the an examination
of the assumption, implicit in the human capital model, that
women’s and men’s investments in paid work represent
individual choices, based on personal priorities and values,
rather than behavior that is constrained by necessity in many
ways. In these analyses, the data cited come from U.S.
sources, unless otherwise noted. A concluding section
includes suggestions for new ways of thinking about the
gender pay gap, and for needed research. Taking a social
psychological perspective, I argue that a new approach to
the use of the human capital model is required—one that
both acknowledges the complexity (and perhaps impos-
sibility) of a completely gender-neutral analysis of inputs
and outcomes, and incorporates psychological, social and
cognitive factors to identify the broad range of influences
that affect the earnings of both women and men. An
understanding of the limits of traditional human capital
approaches, as well as a broader vision of the forces that
influence earnings, is critical to the search for policy
approaches aimed at narrowing the gap between wom-
en’s and men’s earnings.
The Human Capital Model as an Explanatory
Framework
The human capital model posits that workers’ earnings are
directly related to their investments in employment, so that
greater investments in terms of education and training, skill,
work experience, and so on produce greater earnings (e.g.,
Mincer 1974). The model rests on the idea that worker
contributions and merit can be quantified and that rewards
are then distributed in a rational, bias-free way that reflects
this quantification. The human capital approach to
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
compensation is invoked as the driving force behind a wide
range of pay discrepancies: why college graduates earn
more than high school graduates, full professors earn more
than instructors, individuals with rare skills and talents earn
more than their counterparts with more common skills (e.g.,
Becker 1964; Schultz 1995). Yet, it bears admitting that this
model represents an ideal of fairness that may seldom be
achieved, that strong disagreements may exist on how to
value worker investments or contributions, and that incon-
sistencies and hypocrisy can often be found in the way the
model is applied to various situations. Highly public exam-
ples of such inconsistencies can be found in the recent pay
increases and bonuses offered to CEOs of companies whose
abysmal performance would appear to prescribe slashing rath-
er than raising the compensation of the persons in charge: a
67 % increase in compensation for the CEO of Bank of
America, despite the company’s loss of 2.2 billion dollars in
2010, a bonus of 4 million dollars for the CEO of the recently
bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland (Schaefer 2011).
The human capital model provides the basis for com-
ments made by economists and policy analysts who have
argued, for example, that it would be unfair to judge gender
discrimination by wage differences not adjusted for differ-
ences in worker skills or characteristics (Stanley and Jarrell
1998), length of the average work week for women and men
(Oi 1991), or the average number of weeks per year worked
by women and men (Blau and Beller 1988; Jarrell and
Stanley 2004). When analyzing the gender wage gap, pro-
ponents of the human capital approach aim to explain as
much of the gap as possible by controlling for female–male
differences in such tangible inputs as education, work hours,
and years of experience. The observed gap is decomposed
into various explanatory factors, and the remaining, unex-
plained gap, or residual, is thought to represent discrimina-
tion (e.g., Neuman and Oaxaca 2004; Oaxaca 1973).
Discrimination may include discriminatory preferences of
employers, co-workers or customers and statistical discrim-
ination based on employers’ anticipation that women will be
less productive and/or less committed to full-time employ-
ment. It may also include wage depression in female-
dominated jobs that results when qualified women are ex-
cluded from male-dominated occupations, leading to an
oversupply of available workers for female-dominated jobs
(Blau and Kahn 2000). The decomposition approach has
been used in ever more sophisticated models (e.g., Machin
and Puhani 2003; Kunze 2005; Miyoshi 2007) in an attempt
to specify more precisely the variables that lead to the
earnings differential between women and men. Using the
human capital approach, analysts have variously determined
that the portion of the gap that might be attributable to
discrimination (at least until some new explanatory factor
is discovered) may range from 38 % (Blau and Kahn 2000)
to 40 % (Kunze 2005).
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
The assumption that gender-neutral units of input can be
found is itself questionable, however. Indeed, decisions
about which input and outcome measures to use when
comparing women’s and men’s earnings are unlikely to be
completely neutral. Rather, like so many decisions in scien-
tific research, they are entwined with various implicit and
value-laden assumptions (Neuman and Oaxaca 2004). The
focus on such seemingly concrete measures as hours worked
and workforce experience can obscure a host of social
psychological issues such as social influence, perceived
choice, expectations, stereotyping, self-views, and social
capital (Fortin 2005). Furthermore, scrutiny of the earnings
measures (outcomes) used to delineate the pay gap suggests
that even these are not wholly objective and can reflect
gender bias. Indeed, feminist economists and political sci-
entists have long argued that conventional economic
approaches tend to be limited and to neglect the ways in
which societies’ constructions of gender are integral to
women’s and men’s labor market behavior and experience,
making such a “neutral” analysis inadequate and inappro-
priate (e.g., Figart 2005; Whitehouse 2003).
Beneath issues of identification and measurement of
appropriate inputs and outcomes lies the fundamental flaw
in the application of the traditional human capital model: the
assumption that, when women’s and men’s contributions
and compensation are compared, they are set against a
neutral background–a level playing field on which women
and men participate under equal conditions and are judged
fairly and without bias. Yet, as the following sections elab-
orate, this is not the case. Even when the standard human
capital variables are considered and controlled for, gender
differences in pay remain.
Measuring Outcomes
Size and Stability of the Pay Gap
As noted by Blau and Kahn (2007), published government
statistics on annual and weekly earnings of fulltime workers
in the United States reveal that the ratio of women’s to men’s
earnings decreased between 1955 and 1960, remained rela-
tively stable until the late 1970s, then gradually increased until
the early 1990s. Since that time it has fluctuated within a range
of 75 to 79 %. Attempts to forecast the closing of the gap
suggest that there is currently no clear trend toward closing or
widening (Blau and Kahn 2007; Lips 2003).
The size of the gap appears different depending on the
unit of measurement used. For example, data reported by the
U.S. Census Bureau (2011a, Table 38) and the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics (2010a, Tables 16 & 18) indicates that
among full-time year-round workers aged 16 and older in
2009, women’s earnings were 85.5 % of men’s when
171
measured as median hourly pay, but were 80.2 % of men’s
when measured as median weekly earnings and only 77.0 %
of men’s when measured as median annual income. Thus,
the measure chosen to report the gap alters its perceived size
and seriousness.
Hourly Earnings: An Unbiased Measure?
Economists have often stated a preference for the hourly
measure of earnings, asserting that it is less biased toward
exaggerating the gap (e.g., Blau and Kahn 2007; Jarrell and
Stanley 2004). This preference is based on the twin assump-
tions that hourly earnings can be measured accurately and
that they reflect worker input in a fair, gender-neutral way.
For example, Jarrell and Stanley (2004) argue that “Best
research practice suggests that annual and weekly salaries
should not form the basis of discrimination estimates; oth-
erwise, gender differences in weeks worked per year or
hours worked per week may bias these estimates” (p. 836),
and Blau and Kahn (2007) note that “Ideally, we would like
a measure of wages or an hourly rate of pay” (p. 8).
At first blush, such arguments may seem eminently rea-
sonable. After all, the use of hourly earnings should control for
female–male differences in the number of hours worked—and
if women work fewer hours than men, surely they deserve less
pay. Yet, there are several problems with this approach. First,
many worker’s earnings are not computed based on hourly
rates. Many full-time, full-year salaried workers (about 39 %
of employed women and 45 % of employed men in the U.S.;
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010a) are paid on the basis of
an annual salary. Although there is a general expectation that
their work averages from 35 to 40 hr per week, many of these
workers would probably say that their work hours can vary
widely from week to week and that the important thing is
getting the necessary tasks done. Junior academics, for exam-
ple, often joke that if they computed their hourly rate of pay,
they would be making less than a dollar an hour during their
first few years of employment. On the other end of the
continuum, translating the compensation packages for CEOs
of the S&P top 500 companies, which, according to the
Associated Press, averaged $8.4 million in 2007 (Beck and
Fordahl 2008), into hourly wages results in an estimate of
more than $4038 per hour for a fictional 52-week year (no
vacations) at 40 hr per week. When observers complain that
no worker can be worth so much per hour, defenders of the
high compensation are quick to argue that it is not the value of
hourly work, but the value of the individual’s talent and vision
that makes the salary appropriate. Thus, there is a tacit admis-
sion, in at least some instances, that thinking of pay in terms of
hourly wages is not necessarily appropriate.
Equality in terms of hourly earnings may not represent
equality in terms of total labor-market rewards (Whitehouse
2003). For example, hourly wage rates often do not capture
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completely the value of a paycheck in terms of benefits such
as available retirement and health care plans. Such benefits
are often the fruits of labor union negotiations. Indeed, some
research suggests that unionized women workers are 18.8 %
more likely to have health insurance coverage and 24.7 %
more likely to have pension coverage than their non-
unionized counterparts (Schmitt 2008). Men are more likely
than women to belong to unions, although that gender
difference has been eroding as the rate of unionization drops
more quickly for men than women (Schmitt and Warner
2009). Furthermore, there are sectors of the labor force,
such as finance, insurance, and retail, that are largely non-
unionized and where women form a large majority of work-
ers (Bronfenbrenner 2005). In situations where men, but not
women, are unionized the same rate of hourly pay may
translate into more discretionary income for men than
women.
The use of hourly pay as an indicator is also unlikely to
reflect the availability of bonuses, stock options, and other
aspects of compensation (e.g., company car, cell phone) that
are not figured into salary, except perhaps on an annual
basis. Men are more likely than women to hold positions
in which such bonuses are available. For example, a study of
CEOs of a national nonprofit with 207 autonomous member
agencies in 24 countries revealed that female CEOs were
paid less, both in salaries and in bonuses, even controlling
for differences in human capital, organizational size, and
performance variables (Mesch and Rooney 2004). Another
study of more than 5500 individuals employed in the private
sector in the United States showed that women workers
were more likely than men to be paid piece rates and less
likely to be paid commissions and bonuses (Geddes and
Heywood 2003). For those very few women who make it
to the highest corporate positions, this difference in extra-
salary compensation may not exist: One recent study found
that, even when including aspects of extra-salary compen-
sation such as stock options and performance incentives,
there was no difference in compensation between the 61
female and 4,643 male CEOs of firms included in Standard
and Poor’s ExecuComp database, which includes firms in
the S&P 500, midcap 400, and S&P small cap 600 indices
(Adams et al. 2007). There was, however, a gender gap in
compensation among the larger group of non-CEO top
executives in this study.
Another problem with hourly pay as an indicator of the
wage gap is overtime pay. In some jobs, workers who put in
more than their normal number of hours per day or week or
who work on holidays are paid at a higher rate than their
usual hourly wage. Recent data from Great Britain show that
24.1 % of men, but only 12.7 % of women who work full-
time take home overtime pay (Office for National Statistics
2010b). In the United States, workers covered by the Fair
Labor Standards Act are entitled to time and a half for the
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
extra hours if they work more than 40 hr per week. (U.S.
Department of Labor 2008). However, union-negotiated
overtime rates for skilled jobs are sometimes higher—and,
traditionally, men have been more likely than women to be
in jobs covered by such negotiations. Thus, men’s “extra”
hours are paid more highly than women’s (Brereton 1990;
Grimshaw and Rubery 2001). In fact, data from the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2010, Table 5) shows that,
among individuals working more than 40 hr per week, the
gender pay gap increases with the number of hours worked
at the primary job: among those working 41 to 44 hr per
week, women’s weekly earnings are 92 % of men’s, whereas
among those working 60 or more hours per week, women’s
weekly earnings are only 82 % of men’s. In making this
comparison, the reliance on usual hourly wages greatly
underestimates the wage gap.
Suppose, however, that we accept hourly pay as the best
indicator for assessing the discrepancy between the earnings
of women and men. How is such an hourly rate computed
for all those people whose compensation is not defined as an
hourly wage? One approach is to assume a 40-hour week
and divide weekly compensation by that amount. As noted
above, however, 40 hr may not be the correct estimate for
many workers. Another approach is to take employees’ self-
reports of total compensation and divide by their self-
reported number of hours worked to obtain a measure of
work volume. Using this approach, Drolet (2001) found that
men full-time workers reported working an average of
43.1 hr per week in 1997, whereas women reported an
average of 39.0 hr. Controlling for work volume, Drolet
found, reduced the apparent size of the 1997 gender wage
gap from 32 % to 19.6 %. However, Drolet does not provide
evidence as to whether workers in salaried positions who
report more work hours actually contribute more work or are
simply less efficient than those who report fewer hours.
How useful are such estimates of work volume? First,
there is the issue of accuracy. Reporting of hours worked
may be constrained by workplace reporting standards that
mandate a maximum of 40 hr per week, as is the case with
some corporations where employees report billable hours on
a weekly worksheet. As well, researchers have long ac-
knowledged the fallibility of human memory when it comes
to estimates of time spent on various activities (e.g., Bradburn
et al. 1987). Furthermore, they are alert to the possibility that
the desire to be favorably evaluated may color respondents’
estimates (e.g., Nederhof 1985). When dealing with gender
comparisons, there is another potential source of error to
consider: women and men may tend to be biased in different
ways when making these estimates. For example, Major and
her colleagues (Major et al. 1984a) showed that when women
and men were asked to work on a task in the lab for a period of
time and then assign themselves fair pay for their work,
women assigned themselves less money and reported that less
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
money was fair pay for their work. Men have also been shown
to be more likely than women to eschew working in teams
because of a greater confidence in their own than in team
members’ abilities (Kuhn and Villeval 2011). Thus, men
appear to estimate that their work has higher value than
women. Research also suggests that men tend to predict more
successful task outcomes for themselves than women do
(Vollmer 1984). Given findings such as these, it would not
be a stretch to imagine that men may tend to over-report
and/or women to under-report the number of hours they
worked. It is also possible that men are more likely than
women to work in organizations or positions in which com-
pany norms emphasize the demonstration of commitment by
putting in (and reporting) long hours, or that the masculine role
itself simply includes more such pressures across a wide range
of occupations. Indeed, men tend to perceive higher organi-
zational time demands (Beauregard 2006) and have tradition-
ally been more penalized than women for failing to comply
with work role expectations and for accommodating non-
work demands such as family responsibilities (Butler and
Skattebo 2004). These types of pressures may bias men toward
over-reporting their work hours.
Even if the self-report measure is perfectly accurate in
terms of hours worked per week, how adequate is it as a
measure of work volume? It may be the case that some
people can put in an enormous amount of time on a task
and have very little to show for it in the end, whereas others
are superbly efficient in terms of accomplishments per unit
of time. In terms of gender, there is reason to be suspicious
that there are more pressures on women than on men to be
efficient. Women, regardless of their family situation, do
more unpaid domestic work than men do (Lachance-Grzela
and Bouchard 2010; South and Spitze 1994; U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics 2010b); they spend roughly twice as many
hours per week as men do on family-related work (Fuwa
and Cohen 2007). Many women employed full-time must
combine their paid work with a complex set of family
responsibilities. While the presence of these multiple
demands does not guarantee that women are more efficient
at work, it does suggest that the motivation to be efficient
may be stronger for women. Some preliminary evidence
even suggests that women may be better than men at
multi-tasking (”First concrete evidence” 2010). While the
confirmation of such a gender difference would not prove
women are more efficient at work, it should at least raise
doubts about the assumption that women’s fewer reported
work hours translate into less work accomplished.
For many workers (about 39 % of women and 45 % of
men), pay is not calculated on the basis of hours worked
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010a). For these workers,
tasks accomplished—results rather than the amount of time
spent—are the most relevant inputs. As employers recognize
this, they have devised work environments that emphasize
173
productivity rather than time in the office. A case in point is
a system, labeled ROWE (Results Only Work Environment)
by Best Buy, in which certain employees are free to come and
go whenever they like, as long as their tasks get accomplished
(Blakely 2008). Where results are the most important mea-
sure, it is not fair to adjust for hours of work reported, even if it
were possible to get a completely accurate estimate of those
hours.
For all the reasons detailed above, the exclusive reli-
ance on hourly earnings to assess the size and seriousness
of the gender pay gap is likely to be misleading. Whereas
no single measure of work will provide a completely
unbiased picture of relevant inputs, the use of a combi-
nation of measures would acknowledge the complexity of
the issue and is likely to provide a more realistic and
nuanced picture for evaluating the fairness of women’s
and men’s compensation.
Measuring Investments: What are the Important
Human Capital Variables?
Is it Less Biased to Focus on Full-Time Workers?
Women’s expressed preference for part-time work may of-
ten reflect, not a choice, but a response to the unremitting
demands of balancing paid work with family responsibili-
ties. However, researchers who study the gender pay gap
often choose to focus solely on full-time workers rather than
all workers “to adjust for gender differences in hours
worked. …because women are more likely than men to
work part-time” (Blau and Kahn 2007, p. 8). Indeed, in
2009, just over 28.5 % of female but only 15.57 % of male
income-earners worked part-time. The male–female discrep-
ancy in participation in part-time work is evident even
among new college graduates: one year after graduation,
60.5 % of males graduates are employed in one full-time
job, as compared to 54.4 % of female graduates (Cataldi et
al. 2011). Meanwhile, 30 % of the female graduates, but
only 23.3 % of the male graduates hold one or more part-
time jobs. Among workers who worked part-time (i.e., less
than 35 hr per week) for 50 to 52 weeks per year, men’s
median annual earnings were $13,112 annually and wom-
en’s were $12,790 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011a, Table P-41).
Clearly, there are two issues here. One is the large dis-
crepancy between women and men in their participation in
part-time work. The other is the very low income earned by
part-time workers—which disproportionately affects female
workers. Women appear to be constrained, at much higher
rates than men, to “choose” part-time work and thus to
suffer very low levels of income. If such is the case, is it
really fair to leave part-time workers out of the equation
when assessing the gender pay gap?
174
It is interesting to note that, until 2007, among full-year
part-time workers, women actually earned slightly more
than men. This is the only group of workers in which
women have ever appeared to have any advantage. The
deviation from the usual pattern of markedly higher pay
for men may be explained by the fact that, for men, part-
time work has been more likely to be a stop-gap, something
in which they participate when they are younger, whereas
for women it may involve many more years of participation
and commitment. Data from the government’s Current Pop-
ulation Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011, Table
22) shows that both men and women are most likely to be
working part-time between the ages of 16 and 19, after
which the proportion of workers participating in part-time
work drops more steeply among men than women. In the
age range of 25 to 54, almost 28 % of women workers, but
only 14.6 % of male workers work part-time. For many
women, obviously, part-time work is a way of life rather
than a temporary solution.
The standard thinking is that women opt for part-time
work in order to better juggle the demands of work and
family (e.g., Dell’Antonia 2011). Indeed, mothers of young
children are more likely than other women and far more
likely than fathers to work part-time (Allard and Janes
2008), and a survey by the Pew Research Center (2007)
indicates that 60 % of employed mothers say that working
part-time would be the ideal situation for them, whereas
only 28 % of fathers indicate such a preference. Data from
the Current Population Survey shows that women workers,
especially mothers of school-aged children, are more likely
than men to express a preference for fewer work hours
(Golden and Gebreselassie 2007). Among full-time work-
ers, women with young children are not particularly likely to
have access to flexible work schedules (U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics 2007, Table 30), so part-time work may be
their only option. In fact, Canadian statistics on reasons for
part-time work show that, in 2006, almost 20 % of women, but
only 3 % of men part-time workers said they worked part-time
because of family or personal responsibilities (Almey 2007). It
is also noteworthy that mothers of young children are far more
likely to have to depend on expensive formal organized child-
care or daycare arrangements if they work full-time than if
they work part-time (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).
Occupational Choice and Occupational Segregation
One contributing factor to the gender wage gap is the
clustering of women in occupations and sectors that are
relatively low-paid. Occupational sex segregation has been
found to explain a large proportion of the gender wage gap
(Kunze 2005).
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011, Table 39)
reports that women far outnumber men in such broad and
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
relatively low-paid occupational categories as personal care
and service occupations (73.85 %; median weekly salary for
all workers, $455), office and administrative support
occupations (72.87 %; median weekly salary for all work-
ers, $619), healthcare support occupations (87.83 %; me-
dian weekly salary for all workers, $471), and education,
training and library occupations (72.04 %; median weekly
salary for all workers, $913).
On the other hand, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011,
Table 39) also reports that women are a distinct minority in
more highly-paid occupational categories such as architecture
and engineering occupations (12.38 %; median weekly salary
for all workers, $1,255), chief executive officers (25.6 %;
median weekly salary for all workers $1949), protective ser-
vice occupations (19.78 %; median weekly salary for all
workers, $747), construction and extraction occupations
(2.03 %; median weekly salary for all workers, $709), instal-
lation, maintenance and repair occupations (3.69 %; median
weekly salary for all workers, $794) and production, transpor-
tation, and material moving occupations (19.8 %; median
weekly salary for all workers, $599).
Within all these categories, more women are found in the
lower-paid occupations. For instance, within the education,
training, and library category, women are far more likely to
be teacher assistants or preschool and kindergarten teachers
than the more highly compensated secondary or postsecond-
ary teachers; within the production, transportation and ma-
terial moving category, women are much more likely to be
sewing machine operators and pressers than the more highly
paid machinists.
More than 16 % of full-time employed women work in
service occupations: a low-paid category in which women
earn an average of $423 per week and men earn $543.
Almost 23 % of full-time employed women work in office
and administrative support occupations, in which they earn a
median weekly salary of $612 and men earn $656. Thus,
even within occupations dominated by women, women are
more poorly paid than men.
There is no broad occupational category specified in data
from the Current Population Survey in which women’s
earnings equal those of men. An inspection of the more than
100 detailed occupations for which comparative information
is provided by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
reveals only three in which women’s earnings are equal to or
higher than men’s (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011).
So, although it appears to be true that women cluster in
lower-paid occupations, it is notable that within most occu-
pations, even within those that are dominated by women,
women are more poorly paid than men.
Women’s lower pay within occupations may be attribut-
able to within-occupation sex segregation. A great deal of
gender segregation is actually obscured by the highly ag-
gregated occupational categories used by government
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
agencies to monitor trends (Bielby and Baron 1984; 1986;
Tomaskovic-Devey 1995). Bielby and Baron (1986)
reported that, across a wide variety of California companies,
and even within occupations that appeared to include a
balanced representation of women and men, the work done
by women and men tended to be performed in different
organizational settings. Within organizations, women and
men doing the same work were often assigned different
job titles and worked in different parts of the company.
For example, in separate departments of a manufacturing
company, men might be employed as operatives and women
as assemblers, though both were doing essentially the same
work. The researchers note that “men and women were
found in distinct job classifications in almost every setting,
even when their roles were so similar that they belonged to
the same detailed (nine-digit) occupational classification.”
(Bielby and Baron 1986, p. 788).
Furthermore, the assumption that women simply choose
or prefer occupations that happen to be more poorly paid is
just that: an assumption. It is reasonable to ask the extent to
which women are choosing occupations that are poorly
paid, or occupations are poorly paid because they are filled
by women.
Research has been hinting for years that the presence of
women in an occupation affects its prestige and earnings.
For example, when raters in a laboratory situation are asked
to assign salary and prestige to an occupation, they do the
following: 1) the more they believe that masculine qualities
are needed to perform the job successfully, the more salary
and prestige they assign to the job, and 2) the more women
they believe are in a particular occupational category, the
lower the salary they assign to that occupation (Glick 1991;
Glick et al. 1995). In an analysis of real-world data from the
Current Population Survey from 1983 to 2001, England et
al. (2007) found evidence that feminization of occupations
is associated with lower wages. In a recent experimental
study in which respondents were presented with three types
of jobs with identical responsibilities and duties, but which
were situated in traditionally feminine or masculine domains,
researchers found that jobs in the feminine domain were
allocated lower salaries than those in the masculine domain
(Alksnis et al. 2008). Apparently, even if the wage gap is
partly caused by the occupational choices women and men
make, we would be hard pressed to eliminate it by simply
trying to change those choices. It may very well be that, as
women enter an occupation in large numbers, the prestige and
earnings associated with that occupation tend to drop.
Human Capital: Education and Training
Education is another domain in which women’s human
capital investment does not appear to result in rewards equal
to men’s. The education gap between women and men in
175
developed countries has closed rapidly in recent years. In
the United States, more women than men have earned
bachelor’s degrees since 1996; in 2008, women eared
57.8 % of bachelor’s degrees (Cataldi et al. 2011). Women
recently surpassed men in the number of individuals holding
master’s degrees or higher (U. S. Census Bureau 2011b).
Hope is often expressed that women’s increasing levels
of education will lead to a closing of the wage gap (e.g.,
Fortin 2005). However, an examination of the wage gap
within educational levels suggests that higher levels of
education per se do not close the gap. Within each level of
education, from less than ninth grade to graduate and pro-
fessional degrees, women earn less than men; if anything,
the gap widens with increasing levels of education (U.S.
Census Bureau 2011a, Table P-24). Recent data from the
National Center for Education Statistics show that, one year
after completing a bachelors’ degree, the median earned
income for males is $40,000, compared to $34,600 for
female graduates, and male graduates are almost twice as
likely as their female counterparts to be earning more than
$49,200 (Cataldi et al. 2011). A study by the American
Association of University Women showed that, one year
after receiving bachelor’s degrees in 2000, female graduates
working full-time were earning only 80 % of what their
male counterparts were earning, and women working part-
time were earning only 73 % as much as male-part-timers
(Dey and Hill 2007). These discrepancies occurred even
though women and men had graduated from similar kinds
of colleges and women had higher grades than men in every
major. The majors most often chosen by men (e.g., engi-
neering, business) were associated with higher earnings than
those most often selected by women (e.g., education, psy-
chology). However, one year out of college, in nearly every
major, female graduates working full-time earned less than
men with the same major.
Studies of particular occupations support the conclusion
that education and qualifications are not effective in narrow-
ing the gender pay gap. For example, The General Account-
ing Office (GAO 2010) recently released a study of pay
differences between women and men managers in a broad
range of industry categories. Between 2000 and 2007, the
pay gap between female and male managers who worked
full-time, adjusted for age, education, industry sector and a
variety of other variables, narrowed slightly—women went
from 79 % to 81 % of men’s earnings over seven years—
when considering all managers. When considering only
managers with children under 18, that gap in earnings be-
tween women and men had not narrowed at all. More
disturbingly, perhaps, was the GAO’s finding that the slight
decrease in the pay gap occurred in the context of a much
larger decrease in the difference between women’s and
men’s educational qualifications. The proportion of women
managers with a bachelor’s degree increased by 6 percentage
176
points to men’s 3 percentage points over the seven
years of the study. Among these managers, the percent
of women with master’s degrees rose almost 4 points,
while the percent of men with master’s degrees increased less
than 1 point.
In another study of the pay gap among similarly trained
women and men (Sasso et al. 2011), researchers examined
the salaries of newly-trained physicians in New York State
from 1999 to 2008. What they found was startling: whereas,
in 1999, newly-trained men earned an average of $3,600
more than their female counterparts, by 2008 the difference
had ballooned to $16,819 (both figures in 2008 dollars). The
researchers thought that differences in pay between female
and male physicians might be traceable to differences in
work patterns: the idea that women choose lower-paying
specialties, work in different settings, or perhaps work fewer
hours than the men. However, the researchers controlled for
these and many other factors that might have accounted for
the pay disparity. They noted, for example, that the trend
toward a widening gap was evident in both traditionally
male-dominated subspecialties and primary care.
A similar pattern of gender differences in pay even after
controlling for education and training-related human capital
variables was demonstrated in a recent detailed study of
salaries of faculty members at a large state university. In
this study, female faculty members were found to earn an
average of $3,278 less per year than men, even after adjust-
ing for academic rank, discipline, and years of service
(Travis et al. 2009). A pay gap appeared among faculty in
both male-dominated and female-dominated academic
fields.
The issue of field or specialization has been explored on a
broad scale by European researchers, who speculated that it
may not be the level of education but the subject or specialty
that helps to promote the wage gap. One study using data
from labor force surveys in Germany and the United King-
dom found that subject of degree explained 2-4 % of male
college graduates’ higher earnings, even after controlling for
age, industry, region, part-time status, and public vs. private
sector employment (Machin and Puhani 2003). Again, how-
ever, this is a predictor variable that is not gender-neutral
with respect to the surrounding culture. Besides the concern,
detailed above, about the extent to which women’s presence
in a field or specialty lowers its prestige and earnings, there
are very real questions about the extent to which degree
subject reflects unconstrained choice or preference.
Gendered Paths to Different Educational Investments
Students apparently do not make decisions about degree
subjects or career plans under conditions of completely free
choice. Rather, there is evidence for the continued existence
of both explicit and implicit occupational gender stereotypes
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
among university students (White and White 2006). This
should not be surprising; since childhood, they have been
exposed to a steady stream of messages about differences in
the abilities of women and men (e.g., Leaper and Friedman
2007). Such messages establish gendered expectations and
can reinforce the notion of gender as a diffuse status char-
acteristic, and of males as generally more competent than
females except at very particular tasks. Content analyses of
prime-time television programming, commercials, and films
continue to show that male characters are more likely to be
portrayed in work-related roles, whereas female characters
are more often shown in roles that emphasize interpersonal
roles in families, friendships, and romance (Coltrane and
Adams 1997; Lauzen et al. 2008; Smith et al. 2010). Both
female and male characters are most likely to be portrayed
in gender-traditional roles and occupations (Collins 2011;
Smith et al. 2010), and work roles inhabited by female
characters are likely to involve clerical or service occupa-
tions and are unlikely to include the exercise of authority
and instrumental behavior (Coltrane and Adams 1997).
Young people who absorb these messages also accept the
implied constraints of gender stereotypes. In a meta-analysis
of 19 studies on how TV viewing is related to attitudes
about gender roles and occupations, Herrett-Skjellum and
Allen (1996) showed a strong link between the amount of
TV a child watched and that child’s acceptance of stereo-
typical beliefs about gender. In fact, this link was stronger
for stereotypical beliefs about occupations than for other
sex-role behaviors. More recent studies have continued to
show a link between television viewing and acceptance of
traditional gender role attitudes (e.g., Rivadeneyra and Ward
2005; Royo-Vela et al. 2008; Saito 2007), and even that
exposure to stereotypic commercials can undermine young
women’s leadership aspirations and prompt them to avoid
leadership opportunities on a subsequent task in the lab
(Davies et al. 2005).
A particularly clear laboratory example of the impact of
cultural messages about gendered appropriateness of occu-
pations is provided by Correll (2004). In her lab, Correll told
participants they would take a test of contrast sensitivity—
an ability that was increasingly attracting the interest of
graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies. In the intro-
duction, participants were randomly assigned to be told
either that researchers were trying to understand why men
were better at this task than women or why there were no
gender differences in performance on this test. They were
then given two tests of contrast sensitivity test. Each partic-
ipant was told s/he had scored, respectively, 13 out of 20 and
12 out of 20 on the tests.
Participants then completed some self-assessment meas-
ures: how competent they thought they were at contrast
sensitivity and how likely they would be to engage in
activities that required high levels of ability on this task. In
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
the condition in which the contrast sensitivity task was
male-associated, men made significantly higher assessments
of their task competence than women did (even though both
groups received the same scores on the two tests). On the
other hand, in the condition in which contrast sensitivity was
gender-dissociated, there were no gender differences in self-
assessment of competency. Thus, despite receiving feedback
that they were performing equally well, participants were
affected in their assessments of their own ability by the
information that the skill in question was either gendered
or not.
The gender differences in self-assessment played a me-
diating role in the emergence of aspirations for career paths
and educational activities that require competency on the
contrast-sensitivity task: Higher self-assessment of task
competency led to increased self-reported aspirations to
continue on a path requiring such competency. Thus, in
the male-associated condition, men were more likely than
women to show such aspirations. These findings support a
model that suggests an individual’s beliefs about her/his
own competence in particular areas can be influenced by
cultural information about gendered expectations, and that,
in turn, these beliefs about one’s own competence can affect
the individual’s emerging aspirations for investing in career
paths and educational activities that require task relevant
competencies.
Human Capital: Work Experience and Continuity
Researchers often make the point that women are less likely
than men to have continuous work experience and that this
difference explains a portion of the gender wage gap (e.g.,
Miyoshi 2007; Topel 1991). However, research suggests
that the relationship between work experience and pay is
complex, and cannot be summarized by the statement that
women’s lack of such experience causes their lower pay.
One argument (e.g., Polachek 1981) goes that women are
more likely than men to expect their employment to be
intermittent and thus to gravitate toward occupations in
which they will incur fewer penalties for discontinuity. This
argument suggests that the occupations dominated by wom-
en would tend to be those in which starting salaries would
be relatively high, with little expectation of improvement
through on-the-job experience or training (i.e., through ex-
tensive investment in the job). Such jobs, in other words,
would have low rates of appreciation of human capital: long
tenure would not pay off in high levels of reward. The same
argument suggests that women would cluster in jobs where
the penalties for discontinuity are low: where employment
gaps would not lead to an atrophy of skills or credentials
that would result in lower wages upon returning to work.
These are jobs in which rates of depreciation of human
capital are low: the value of the worker’s efforts does not
177
erode quickly, even when not being utilized. This argument
is not supported by empirical research: starting wages are
not higher in predominantly female occupations, and
female-dominated occupations do not show lower penalties
than men’s for employment gaps (England et al. 1988).
The consequences of gaps in labor force participation do
appear to be gendered. In one study, psychologists presented
human resources professionals with identical resumes of
women and men who had either no gaps, a single gap, or
several gaps in their employment history and asked for their
assessment on likelihood of interview, recommended salary,
and inferences about motivation and commitment (Smith et
al. 2005). Men were recommended for higher pay in the no
gap or single gap conditions, but not in the multiple-gap
condition; men with employment gaps were viewed more
negatively than women. The researchers speculated that
female applicants with employment gaps were assumed to
have been meeting family obligations, whereas male appli-
cants with employment gaps had left or lost jobs for less
positive reasons.
This study makes explicit the assumption that unex-
plained employment gaps are viewed in a negative light
and that a record unblemished by such gaps is seen as more
valuable. Men may be judged more harshly for employment
gaps because there is no obvious explanation for them (note,
though, that men were not penalized more than women in
terms of pay recommendations). However, men are also
penalized when gaps are explicitly attributed to parental
leave (Allen and Russell 1999). Women are probably more
likely than men to have gaps in employment and thus to
suffer the effects of the assumption that continuous unbro-
ken employment experience represents a steady, linear in-
crease in the value a worker brings to an employer.
Part of the effect of work experience on pay could be due
to promotions, which are often linked to seniority. The link
appears to be bi-directional: Managers, especially women
managers, who have been promoted are less likely to resign
(Lyness and Judiesch 2001) and workers with longer tenure
are more likely to be promoted (Blau and Devaro 2007).
Blau and Devaro (2007) found, in a large employer survey,
that, for both women and men, promotions were associated
with an average wage increase of 7 to 8 % over starting
wages. However, they also found that women were signif-
icantly less likely than men to be promoted, even after
controlling for variables such as age, education, job tenure,
and performance. This echoes earlier findings that men’s
career advancement is faster than women’s, even when con-
trolling for women’s greater likelihood of taking career breaks
(Jagacinski et al. 1987). Thus, it appears that female–male
differences in work experience cannot wholly explain differ-
ences in promotion probability that lead to differences in pay.
Continuous work experience is clearly something employ-
ers value, and interpret as a sign of stability and organizational
178
commitment—and as a sign that they will likely not be faced
with the costs inherent in employee turnover (Shore et al.
2008). However, although the value of experience is often
acknowledged, it is not clear that such experience must be
unbroken or that there is a steady increase in a worker’s value
with each passing year of experience. There is no good evi-
dence that, for instance, the tenth consecutive year of employ-
ment increases a worker’s value to the employer to the same
degree as the second year. In fact, the availability of sabbat-
icals and leaves of absence suggests an implicit recognition of
the idea that a break from some forms of employment can
often be beneficial to both employee and employer: providing
the employee with the opportunity to learn new skills, earn
new qualifications, develop new ways of thinking about prob-
lems, and/or refresh flagging interest and motivation (e.g., “…
and employers begin to see benefits” 2007).
Life “Choices” and the Gender Pay Gap
An examination of human capital variables (inputs) typical-
ly included in discussions of the gap reveals that discrimi-
nation appears inextricably intertwined with many, if not
most, of these variables. Although these variables tend to be
discussed as though women and men make different
“choices,” a deeper examination reveals that there is often
more necessity than choice involved. In fact, some theorists
have argued that gender discriminatory conditions and indi-
vidual choices are so reciprocally intertwined that they are
separable only on some hypothetical analytic level (Ridgeway
and Correll 2004). One thing that seems clear is that a focus on
individual choices, rather than on the wider contextual
patterns of constraints, leads to an oversimplified view of the
problem. Work-life choices are not simply personal, but part
of a societal and organizational pattern of power relationships
(Özbilgin et al. 2011). The lines between choice and discrim-
ination become blurry when considered in the light of the
systematic biases and poor alternatives that often confront
women at work.
Number of Hours Worked: A Choice?
Implicit in the discussion about the fairness of adjusting
estimates of earnings discrimination for the number of hours
worked is that hours worked reflect workers’ choices and
preferences. However, the availability of work hours is not
necessarily aligned with workers’ choices. Golden and
Gebreselassie (2007) report that, when asked if they would
prefer to work more or fewer hours for a commensurate
increase or decrease in pay, almost 7 % of workers surveyed
(8.6 % of women and 5.4 % of men) would prefer fewer
hours and 27.25 % (24.3 % of women and 30 % of men)
would prefer more hours than they actually worked. Another
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
examination of mismatches between actual and preferred
work hours showed that, when queried about how much
time they would prefer to spend in various activities, includ-
ing work, nearly 60 % of U.S. workers surveyed wanted to
change their work hours or status, with 37 % indicating a
desire for reduced hours and 22 % a desire for more hours.
This study illustrated that between 1940 and 1988, work
hours increased for women and men in skilled jobs but
decreased for those in less skilled jobs—creating a class of
constrained workers who want more work hours than are
available to them (Reynolds 2003).
Are women constrained more than men in terms of the
number of hours they can work? And, if so, to what extent
do such constraints reflect gender discrimination? It may
sometimes be assumed that, because of family responsibil-
ities, women with children are more likely than men to
sacrifice work hours for increased flexibility in work sched-
ules. More flexibility in return for fewer hours may seem
like a fair tradeoff; however, this tradeoff seems to be
fictional. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows
that, among full-time workers, women with school-aged
children are no more likely (McMenamin 2007) or perhaps
even less likely (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007, Table
30) than men in all categories and than never-married wom-
en to have flexible work schedules. Although both women
and men may often wish for fewer or more flexible work
hours, they may not be able to afford such choices because
they may entail accepting part-time rather than full-time
employment.
The fact that women, particularly mothers, are often
pushed out of full-time work or relegated to lower-status
positions in which they have less access to work hours or to
the promotions that would lead to more challenging posi-
tions, is confirmed by a significant body of research. The
pushing out appears linked to employer resistance to family-
friendly work policies and assumptions about women’s level
of professional commitment. Although just over half of first-
time mothers now have access to at least some paid mater-
nity leave, this flexibility tends to be available mainly to
educated women (Laughlin 2011). Among first-time moth-
ers employed full-time in 2006–2008, 66.3 % of those with
a bachelor’s degree or more were able to take at least some
form of paid maternity leave, 12.9 % quit their jobs and
2.7 % were let go from their jobs. By contrast, among
women workers with less than a high school education, only
18.5 % had paid maternity leave, 50 % quit their jobs and
10.9 % were let go. Most first-time mothers returned to
work quickly after childbirth, but one in five worked fewer
hours.
Availability of flexible work hours and other family-
friendly initiatives predicts retention and reduced turnover
among employed mothers (Glass and Riley 1998; Hofferth
1996; McDonald et al. 2005; Pierce and Newstrom 1982;
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
Rothausen 1994). On the other hand, work cultures in which
there is strong pressure to prioritize work over family or
other personal responsibilities and to put in long hours as a
demonstration of organizational commitment are associated
with increased anxiety, fatigue, and depression for women
(Beauregard 2011). The use of flexible working hours by a
job candidate or incumbent has been shown to be variously
linked to the perception of that individual as less committed
to the job, less suitable for advancement, and less ambitious
than individuals with similar qualifications (Cohen and
Single 2001; Lewis 1997; Rogier and Padgett 2004).
Women report that they are not considered seriously for pro-
motion or for interesting assignments if they have children
(Roberts and Ayre 2002), or take time off work to care for
children (Acker 2006). One study of women engineers, for
example, showed they faced a work environment in which, if
they were trying to combine work and family, they were
viewed as less committed than men to their careers, over-
looked for promotion, and felt the impact of discrimination
(Roberts and Ayre 2002). Yet cutting-edge companies, such as
Facebook, that provide supportive work-family environments
do not suffer economically and are able to retain female
employees (Kaufman 2011).
Both the reality and expectation that women handle more
domestic and family responsibilities than men contributes to
more constraints on their working hours. In addition, the
availability of work hours may sometimes also directly reflect
gender discrimination. Women have brought lawsuits against
a number of large employers, such as the Chicago Police
Department (“Denial of overtime” 2007), Boeing (Nyhan
2004), CBS (Rutenberg 2000), and Wal-Mart (Armour
2003) claiming they have been denied the same opportunities
as men to work overtime hours or that they have been forced
to work overtime hours without pay. Of course, limits on
available hours are not experienced only by women; men
too may have constraints on the number of paid hours avail-
able to them. The key issue is that the number of hours worked
is not always a choice.
“Soft” Variables that Shape Choices: Expectations, Values,
Stereotypes, and Social Capital
Most researchers who attempt to decompose the reasons for
the gender wage gap into human capital differences between
women and men do not attempt to include psychological,
cultural or other “soft” variables such as motivation, values,
cultural norms, or expectations. This may be because such
variables are not as easily and confidently measured as the
“hard” variables such as age, education, years on the job, or
number of children. It may also be harder to make a case
that such variables represent, not simply difference, but
differences in the value brought by an employee to the
workplace. However, there have been persistent signals that
179
psychological variables (whether or not they signify differ-
ences in human capital) can contribute significantly to the
gender wage gap—perhaps by affecting workers’ behavior.
Researchers have shown, for instance, that expectations
about pay appear to have an impact on the actual pay
received (Hojat et al. 2000; Major et al. 1984b) and that
women often report lower pay expectations than men
(Heckert et al 2002; Jackson et al. 1992; Kaman and Hartel
1994; Keaveny and Inderrieden 2000; Lips and Lawson
2009). Research has also demonstrated that traditional gen-
der role orientation is associated with higher earnings for
men and with lower earnings for women (Judge and
Linvingston 2008).
Soft variables may be cultural or contextual as well as
personal. Fortin (2005) examined the relationships between
the pay gap and gender role attitudes and work values
among respondents in 25 OECD countries. Although she
did find that women’s participation in tertiary education
(which may well reflect a society’s attitudes toward women
as well as women’s human capital) accounted for a large
portion of the variance in the gender pay gap across
countries, she also found that directly measured attitudinal
variables were important. For example, where more men
than women indicated agreement that “When jobs are
scarce, men should have more right to a job than women,”
(p. 423) the gender pay gap was larger; when fewer women
than men indicated agreement that “Being a housewife is
just as fulfilling as working for pay,” (p. 423) the gender pay
gap was smaller. Cultural norms, then, provide a climate
within which human capital attributes are converted into
outcomes of employment, pay, and promotion—and may
well moderate this conversion in different ways for women
and men.
A focus on cultural and psychological variables leads to
the understanding that social capital, or standing in social
networks, is important, along with personal attitudes, in
translating individuals’ human capital into successful labor
market outcomes (O’Neil et al. 2008). For human capital
attributes such as education, skills and experience to trans-
late into rewards, those attributes must be recognized and
appreciated by colleagues, supervisors, and potential
employers—and this recognition and appreciation depends
significantly on the individual’s connections with and image
among other people. Gender, through stereotypes, norms
and expectations, affects relationships and thus cannot but
affect social capital. Thus, for example, even women with
strong human capital attributes can be hindered in their
advancement by male-dominated hierarchies—and they
can be helped by interpersonal support and encouragement
(Tharenou 2001).
The idea that human capital differences alone can explain
outcome differences between women and men presupposes
that both groups are operating in equivalent contexts, with
180
equivalent cultural and social support. This is most often not
the case. Schein and her colleagues (Schein et al. 1989;
Schein et al. 1989; Schein 2007) have demonstrated that,
in the U.S. and other countries, women who wish to move
into managerial roles must frequently confront a “think
manager–think male” (Schein et al 1996, p. 33) mentality,
particularly among their male colleagues at work. Wajcman
(1998) has detailed the masculine managerial stereotypes
and implicit biases about career and family that pervade
the cultures of large multinational corporations. Other
researchers have shown that women are evaluated more
harshly than men when engaging in directive, authoritative
leadership (Eagly et al. 1992; Phelan and Rudman 2010),
that women are held to higher standards of both competence
and warmth than men (Phelan et al. 2008) and that women
who engage self-promotion are disliked more than men
(Rudman 1998). Such findings make it clear that, even if
women possess human capital attributes equivalent to those
of men, those attributes may be evaluated and rewarded
differently. Further, since such evaluation differences may
occur at many stages of a woman’s career and affect her
work-related decisions and outcomes, they are inevitably
entwined with seemingly concrete human capital variables
such as education, work experience, and training.
Conclusions
The data show that even when women and men appear to
have equal investments in their work (equal levels of edu-
cation, similar occupations, etc.) they do not necessarily
reap the equal outcomes in terms of pay that the human
capital model would suggest. Furthermore, when women’s
and men’s investments do appear to be different, the way
those differences translate into the explanation for the gen-
der pay gap is still not so clear. An examination of the
complexities of some of the human capital variables most
commonly used to explain female–male differences in pay
reveals that the different inputs contributed by women and
men do not actually explain the pay gap in any neutral or
reassuring way. These variables are indeed associated with
the pay gap, but they cannot explain it in the social/cultural
sense of that verb. There are two reasons for this failure.
First, as illustrated above, each of these variables is itself
complicated and requires an explanation. Certainly, for ex-
ample, part-time as opposed to full-time work is associated
with lower pay, and more women than men work part-time.
But if we start to question why women are more likely than
men to work part-time, we discover that this part-time/full-
time difference is an indicator of a variety of other issues,
some of which reflect an employment system that is biased
against women. Thus, many concrete-appearing variables can
be “unpacked” to reveal a series of cumulative small effects of
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
gender discrimination and the associated gendered choices.
As Ridgeway and Correll (2004) note, “While the biasing
impact of gender beliefs on the outcomes of men and women
in any one situation may be small, … [they] …accumulate
over careers and lifetimes to result in substantially different
behavioral paths and social outcomes for men and women
who are otherwise similar in social background” (p. 520).
Second, the analytic approach used, which basically
enters a number of predictor variables into a regression
equation and measures the amount of associated variance
in a criterion variable (the pay gap), is limited in the kinds of
inferences it can support. Although we commonly use the
word “explain” when talking about such analyses, research-
ers understand that what is actually meant is that certain
predictor variables are statistically associated with a criteri-
on variable. Grounded in their own assumptions and pre-
ferred theories about what is important, researchers, make
decisions about which variables to include as predictors and
which to leave out. Thus, for example, a researcher may
think it reasonable to adjust for the fact that women work
fewer paid hours per week to explain women’s lower earn-
ings. The same researcher may not think it necessary or
appropriate to adjust for the presence of a spouse who is
handling the bulk of childcare and domestic responsibilities
to explain men’s ability to work more hours per week to
achieve higher earnings. Furthermore, the demonstration of
an association, even a strong association, between a predic-
tor and criterion variable, is vulnerable to multiple interpre-
tations, including the possibility that both variables are
being affected by an unmeasured third variable, that the
criterion variable is actually causing changes in the predictor
variable, or that there is a reciprocal causal relationship
between predictor and criterion.
Suppose, for example, we were to entertain the assump-
tion that, instead of the differential in hours worked by
women and men causing the difference in their pay, it is
the difference in pay that produces the differential in hours
worked? It is well-documented that workers offered lower
pay and fewer opportunities to advance are less motivated
and less likely than more highly-rewarded workers to re-
main attached to their positions (e.g., Frederico et al. 1976;
Luna-Arocas and Camps 2008). If women are earning low
wages, it can be argued that their behavior of devoting fewer
hours to paid work is a rational response to the situation.
There are indeed indications that women’s and men’s
work-related behavior is related to societal contextual differ-
ences. For example, men do more unpaid domestic work in
societies where women are more fully employed (Hook
2006). Employed pregnant women report more job satisfac-
tion when their organization has a satisfactory maternity
leave policy (Brown et al. 2002). Expanded opportunities
for parental leave are associated with increased leave-taking
by both mothers and fathers (Han et al. 2009).
Sex Roles (2013) 68:169–185
Is it possible to imagine an explanation in which it is the
gender wage gap itself, and the (perhaps unacknowledged)
societal motivation to retain it, that produces the gender
differences in human capital just discussed? If we were to
deliberately design a society in which there was a virtual
guarantee that women would work fewer hours and choose
part-time work and lower-paid occupations more often than
men, what would we do? We would probably reward wom-
en less than men for their work, make it difficult for them to
combine family and full-time employment responsibilities,
and identify certain lower-paid occupations with femininity
and higher-paid ones with masculinity.
Such reflections lead to the suggestion that research on
the links between various aspects of the human capital
model and the gender pay gap be re-conceptualized. It
may be time to move beyond regression equations that
encompass more and more supposedly neutral predictor
variables to “explain” an incrementally greater proportion
of the pay gap. As we have seen, each predictor variable is
embedded in several layers of context that shapes its mean-
ing and its impact on the pay received by women and men.
What we need to understand is not what predicts pay
inequities, but why and how the processes operate—and
how those processes could be subverted. That implies a
focus on the intersection of gender-normative societal
expectations, organizational contextual factors and work-
related decisions. Field studies are needed that examine the
links between different organizational policies (e.g., multi-
ple career path opportunities, various accommodations for
family responsibilities, access to mentoring) and pay differ-
entials for female and male employees. Detailed case studies
that provide a more fine-grained analysis of the occurrence
of the pay gap within organizations are also needed. Be-
cause the distribution of female and male workers in some
workplaces, work units, and levels of seniority within
organizations is often uneven, such case studies require
statistical approaches that are more flexible and less con-
strained by requirements for normality of distributions and
equality of variances than the traditional regression ap-
proach. A good example of such an approach is the use of
resampling simulation to investigate the gender gap in fac-
ulty salaries at one university (Travis et al. 2009). Studies of
organizations that conduct regular assessments of their em-
ployment policies to discern and correct gender-
discriminatory impacts of those policies would be useful.
Longitudinal studies of young women and men as they
progress from high school onward toward employment
could help identify trigger points at which their paths toward
lower and higher compensation occurs—and at which some
intervention might be appropriate. Taking a laboratory ap-
proach to these issues, greater understanding of the process-
es that lead to different pay for women and men might be
gained by carrying out computer simulation studies of
181
“what-if” scenarios, in which individuals begin with differ-
ent sets opportunities and responsibilities and proceed
through a number of trials to an eventual outcome. Research-
ers have used simulation to explore, for example, the potential
impact of shared parental leave on gender economic equality
in old age in Sweden (Baroni 2011), of factors such as shorter
working life and longer life expectancy on retirement benefits
for women in Turkey (Elveren 2008), and of a variety of
variables on gender differences in corporate advancement
(Robison-Cox et al. 2007). Each of the above approaches is
potentially more complex and messy than using a regression
equation to explain some proportion of the gap. However, the
limitations of the latter approach in its ability to untangle the
complexities of the pay gap suggest the necessity for a wider
variety of research methods.
Clearly, trying to understand the gender pay gap as if we
can use a set of unbiased, objective variables to explain the
gap is potentially misleading with respect to public under-
standing of and public policy toward the pay gap. This is not
to say that human capital variables are unimportant or that
the search for predictors of the pay gap should be aban-
doned. However, the situation is much more complex than
acknowledged by the traditional human capital model ap-
proach: causal influences go in both directions, and seem-
ingly neutral variables turn out, on deeper inspection, to
incorporate elements of a discriminatory system. A clear-
eyed examination of these complexities, the willingness
both to broaden the human capital approach to incorporate
these where possible, and to expand our analyses beyond the
inherent limitations of this model, are probably what is
necessary to understand—and ultimately shrink—the gen-
der pay gap.
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