Women's Wages Research Articles

Mainstream Discourse and the Construction of Public Understanding of Women's Employment

1949年后在妇女就业知识上存在着三种主流话语。一是计划经济时代，妇女就业知识以“革命话语”来叙述，实现了对妇女参加公共领域劳动的动员；二是从计划经济向市场经济转型的过程，妇女就业知识是以“素质话语”被叙述的，其在力图将妇女推回家庭领域的过程中压低了女性劳动力的价格；三是市场化时代，妇女就业知识以“男性强势话语”被表述，显示了市场经济与父权制的有机结合。与此同时，有关妇女就业知识的女性主体性也在形成，它显示出女性自主意识及其对人权话语的使用。 关键词: 革命话语素质话语男性强势话语 There have been three types of mainstream discourse relating to public understanding of women's employment since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The first was the “revolutionary discourse” that dominated the era of the planned economy. During this period, knowledge about women's employment was heavily influenced by revolutionary discourse, and women were mobilized to take up positions in virtually all areas of social life. The second occurred in the transition from a planned to a market economy. During this process, knowledge of women's employment was constructed by a so‐called “quality discourse,” which depressed women's wages in the course of driving them back into the home. The third important mode of discourse took place in the era of marketization, and saw knowledge about women's employment constructed by male‐centered hegemonic discourse in an organic union between the market economy and the patriarchal system. Meanwhile, female subjectivity in regard to knowledge about women's employment is taking shape. At the same time, women's sense of autonomy in relation to understanding of employment has started to grow and exhibits self‐awareness and use of the discourse of human rights.

Is There a Motherhood Wage Penalty in the Finnish Private Sector?

This paper investigates the effects of children on women's wages in the Finnish private sector. The paper finds evidence of the motherhood wage penalty, the penalty varying with the length of the child-related career break. Mothers staying at home no longer than for 2 years face considerably smaller penalties than mothers spending longer periods at home. The negative wage effects of children decrease, however, quickly with time. For example, mothers who experience a career break of 2 years or less do not lag behind non-mothers in terms of wages after the second year from the return to employment. There is also variation in the motherhood wage penalty across the wage distribution. The penalty is higher at the top of the distribution than in the middle of it, especially in the cases of prolonged child-related career breaks.

Gender Pay Gap

We discuss the special role of women in Green Economics. The article explains the origins of the gender pay gap as a Nash equilibrium of a game with incomplete information about women's work at home and in the marketplace. Expectations about women's lower market wages leads to the overutilization of women in the household, and this, in turn, leads to lower productivity and lower wages for women in the marketplace. The situation is rational but (as the prisoner's dilemma) it is generally Pareto inferior. Inequity at home breads inequity in the marketplace and reciprocally, leading to a persistent gender gap. With learning by doing, at high levels of skill there is a Pareto superior equilibrium where men and women share efforts equally at home and receive the same pay in the marketplace, firms enhance their profits, and there is additionally more welfare at home. Updated Family Law and appropriate contracts can help resolve this Pareto inferior situation as well as increase productivity and economic growth in the economy as a whole (Pyle, 1990).

“For us women, working is an unfulfilled dream”: Womens' wage work and food security

abstract This article reviews the findings from two small community studies in South Africa on the experience of poor households in respect of the economic downturn, employment, and food security, with special emphasis on gender dynamics. This study was implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council and funded by Oxfam International, and sought to explore the human, social and personal experiences of the economic downturn. The study interviewed 29 households in Swedenville, a recently formed shack settlement outside of the Pretoria/Johannesburg city region that mainly comprises rural in-migrants, and in Bergpoort, a rural sending community in Mpumalanga. Most of the shack households and many of the rural households reported not being able to afford preferred foods or to eat three meals a day. The female-headed households without male partners were unable to send workers to the labour market and survived on social grants alone; they clustered at the bottom of both communities' income distributions and suffered the greatest food insecurity. High levels of migration left migrant households isolated and vulnerable, dependent on their own resources, with few reliable contacts in communities made up of strangers. Shack households especially reported surviving on part-time or insecure employment of the male partner only, while the women remained out of the labour force; women's wage employment was low in the rural community as well. Interviews with the women point to a concealed gender struggle over women's access to wage work. To protect the male lead role in domestic relations, younger rural-born men in particular may discourage their previously employed wives or partners from remaining in the labour market. Although women's wage contribution could make these impoverished households viable and food secure, isolated and vulnerable women may acquiesce in order to avoid the greater food security risk of becoming female household heads.

Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work

This paper analyzes households' demand for time inputs to domestic services, modeling simultaneously the decision to purchase services in the market and the time spent on weekend and weekday days by each partner on routine household chores. By focusing on cleaning, laundry, and ironing, we reduce the likelihood that preferences matter and increase the overlap with market services. Particular emphasis is placed on estimating the effects of prices, as captured by own and partner wages and the market price for domestic services. We exploit time-diary data for Great Britain and France, relying on cross-country comparisons to generalize our findings. The results indicate that prices strongly influence market purchases, and that maid service is a closer substitute for household time on weekends than weekdays, but is also correlated with 'her' weekday time. More generally, we find that women's wages have a stronger association with the inputs to domestic work than any other price measure.

Technological and Organizational Change and the Employment of Women: Early Twentieth-Century Evidence from the Ohio Manufacturing Sector

Using a data set that tracks the employment and wages of male and female production and clerical workers in Ohio from 1914 to 1937, this study finds that among manufacturing establishments, female employment and real wages rose rapidly throughout this period, particularly within clerical occupations. There were also substantial increases in the proportion of women in Ohio's manufacturing workforce, and women's wage increases kept pace with those of men. After matching the employment and wage data to input and output data from Ohio's manufacturing census, the study estimates the parameters for industry group translog production functions. The estimates indicate that Ohio's manufacturers adopted new organizational structures and technologies that favored an increasingly intensive use of female clerical labor. The study performs a counterfactual exercise that illustrates the extent to which non-neutral technological and organizational changes over this period explain the observed increases in the employment and remuneration of female clerical workers.

Child-related Career Interruptions and the Gender Wage Gap in France

In this paper, we investigate the extent of the effects of children and child-related time out of the labor market on the gender wage gap in France, with special attention to its impact on the accumulation and composition of human capital. Measuring this impact requires detailed information on the individuals' employment history that is rarely available. The French Families and Employers survey (INED, 2005) provides this information. We first look at men's and women's wage determinants, including the penalties associated with unemployment and time out of the labor market. We find that having controlled for jobs characteristics and selection into employment, there is a penalty attached to child-related time out of the labor market, which affects only women. We do not find any direct negative impact of children on women's current hourly wage at the mean. Then for a sub-sample of men and women aged from 39 to 49, we use a decomposition of the gender wage gap into an interruption wage gap between women, and a gender wage gap between women who have never taken child-related time out and men. We find that the wage gap between men and women who have never interrupted their participation in the labor force is nexplained while the wage gap between women who have had child-related interruptions and women who have not is essentially explained.

The Trade Boards Act of 1909 and the Alleviation of Household Poverty

AbstractThis article examines the effects of the 1909 Trade Boards Act on women's wage rates and income contributions to poor households. The Act established boards charged with setting minimum hourly wages in selected low‐paid trades, and the majority of workers affected before the First World War were women. Many of the women whose wages were raised by the Act were the wives and daughters of low‐skilled workers, while many others were sole earners who supported children or elderly parents. Our main finding is that the Trade Boards Act was effective in reducing household poverty rates among the women whose wages it would have increased.

The level of women's remuneration in Poland with particular emphasis on women-managers

The authors analyse the level of women's remuneration in Poland with particular emphasis on women-managers The first part of the study deals with an analysis of the women's salaries and wages in Poland. Next, we present women's remuneration at managerial positions.

Effects of social sharing of child-care on women's wage and full-time employment

Effects of social sharing of child-care on women's wage and full-time employment

The Politics of Women's Economic Independence

We identify the political conditions that shape the economic position of married/cohabiting women and of the economically most vulnerable group of women—single mothers. Specifically, we examine the determinants of reductions in single mothers' poverty rate due to taxes and transfers, and women's wages relative to spouses'/ partners' wages. The Luxembourg Income Study archive yields an unbalanced panel with 71 observations on 15 countries. The principal determinants of poverty reduction due to taxes and transfers are left government, constitutional veto points, and welfare generosity. The relative wage of women in couples is a function mainly of female labor force participation, part time work among women, and women's mobilization. In explaining the causal pathways to these outcomes, we highlight the interrelationships of welfare state, care, and labor market policies.

Cumulative Gender Disadvantage in Contract Employment

Women's wages do not grow with experience or tenure as much as men's do. Many accounts of this cumulative gender disadvantage attribute it to women's underinvestment in firm-specific skills. Yet if that were true, this disadvantage would not exist where firm-specific skills are not rewarded by the labor market. This article investigates this argument in the context of contract employment, where demand for firm specificity is minimal. Contrary to expectations, men still receive higher rewards than women over time. Drawing on quantitative evidence and qualitative fieldwork using job histories of high-skill contractors affiliated with a staffing firm, the author finds support for two sources of women's disadvantage: lower rates of movement across clients on the supply side and unmeasured demand-side factors by which similar levels of tenure and client transitions accrue lower rewards to women. Implications for research on gender stratification and career advancement in non-formalized labor markets are discussed.

Establishment-level wage effects of entering motherhood

We analyse the wage effects following employment breaks of women who enter motherhood using a novel matching approach where mothers' wages upon return to work are compared to those of their female colleagues within the same establishment. Using an administrative German data set, we apply a fixed-effects propensity score matching based on information two years before birth of the first child. Our results yield new insights into the nature of the wage penalty associated with motherhood: when matching with establishment-specific effects we find that first births reduce women's wages by 19%, whereas ignoring the identifier and matching across all establishments would yield a wage cut of 26%. We therefore conclude that selection into establishments is an important explanatory factor for the family pay gap. Copyright 2009 , Oxford University Press.

Agricultural wage work, seasonal migration and the widening gender gap: evidence from a semi-arid region of Andhra Pradesh

In India, there are large gender disparities in ownership of agricultural land and the state's poverty alleviation programmes mainly target landless male labourers. Given these conditions, agricultural wage work was the only avenue through which poor rural women could expect to become financially independent and combat iniquitous social norms. This development paradigm was the guiding force behind the feminization of agricultural wage work in India. This study investigates the linkages between female work and empowerment implicit to the process of feminization for the semi-arid regions of Andhra Pradesh. We find that women here are heavily involved in agricultural wage work mainly because better paying work like self-employment and seasonal migration are beyond the reach of most women. As a result women's wages, working conditions and relative power within the household remain acutely depressed. Furthermore, evidence suggests that income from seasonal migration is causing the wealth gap between men and wo...

UNIVERSAL DISADVANTAGE?

ABSTRACT Working fewer than full-time hours has been seen as a crucial way in which women workers can balance demands from home and paid work. But working part-time holds a range of negative repercussions for other aspects of worker's lives, in particular their economic well-being. Examining objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being, the paper uses data from the European Community Household Panel Survey to consider the ramifications of working short hours for women in Europe. The paper is concerned with the generalisability of the very weak situation of part-timers in Britain. It asks whether and how the economic problems faced by women at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy differ according to societal context. The papers shows that part-time low level workers had the lowest monthly wages relative to their compatriots in each country examined, though the intensity of wage disadvantage varied substantially across the sample. The research did not uncover a universal positive correlation between women's relative wage positions and individual level measures of economic well-being, however. The most prevalent association between working part-time in a low level occupation and facing a weak economic position occurred at the level of household economies. The paper concludes by asking how we best research economic well-being, including whether it should be approached via an individual or household level analysis.

Sources of crime in the state of Veracruz: The role of female labor force participation and wage inequality

In recent years, crime has become a serious concern in Mexico as its increase has detrimentally affected government institutions and economic growth. There is considerable speculation among policy analysts about the causes of the increase in crime. Whereas some analysts attribute the increase to a rise in income inequality, others believe internal migration and a loss of morals are the roots of criminal behavior. This research shows that at least for the Mexican state of Veracruz, wage inequality and labor force participation have an important impact on crime. When gender is considered, however, the impact is more complicated than it seems. An increase in women's labor force participation decreases the overall number of alleged violent offenders. However, the number of alleged rapists and grievous bodily harm offenders increases as women's wage distribution improves. The results shed light on the gender dimensions of the economics of crime.

Gender differences in occupational wage mobility in the 1958 cohort

This article examines the wage growth of British men and women between the ages of 33 and 42 who were employed full time at both of these ages using the 1958 National Child and Development Study. Wage growth is examined in the differences of the log of hourly wage rates reported at the 33 and 42 year old interviews of this cohort study. Men were found to have higher wage growth rewards than women when in higher occupations and be more likely than women to be in these higher wage growth occupations. Women's wages grew more slowly over the period than men's wages because they were located disproportionately in lower growth and feminized jobs. Domestic ties did not explain the differences in wage growth for this group, where the occupational penalties of gender widened.

Why Do Women's Wages Increase So Slowly Throughout Their Career? A Dynamic Model of Statistical Discrimination

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to explain the growing wage differentials between men and women during their working careers. We provide a dynamic model of statistical discrimination, which integrates specific human capital decisions: on‐the‐job training investment and wages are endogenously determined. We reveal a small wage differential at the beginning of women's career, but women's wages increase more slowly; this is partly due to a lower level of human capital investment by women and partly because firms smooth training costs between different periods.

Pragmatic Procrastination: Governments, Unions and Equal Pay, 1949-68

The twentieth century contours of Australia's halting progress towards equal pay for women are fairly well delineated. Understandably, earlier scholars have tended to concentrate on public turning points such as the benchmark arbitration cases and legislative amendments. This article seeks to focus between the apparent post-World War II peaks and to examine the powerful social and economic forces delaying implementation of even minimal wage equality for so long. Firstly, the Menzies federal government, closely monitored by its policy advisers, adopted delaying tactics every step of the way - even after some Liberal parliamentarians and party structures became restive with its inertia. Labor state governments, despite their eventual legislative smoke and mirrors, remained equally concerned to restrain female labour costs. Labor's detachment was matched by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the great bulk of the union movement which, while going through elaborate motions, concentrated on wages and job security for males. Finally, while majority public opinion continually seemed to support the principle of equal pay, the decline of 1940's idealism, rifts between older, 'first wave' feminists and continued national prosperity meant that the women's wages cause in the 1950s and much of the 1960s lacked the urgency and impetus which 'second wave' leadership was to bring in the 1970s.

Is deindustrialization good for women? Evidence from the United States

The gender wage gap in the United States narrowed considerably throughout the 1980s and then more slowly in the 1990s. Using a decomposition methodology and US Current Population Survey data, this study investigates the impact of deindustrialization's continuing shift in employment away from manufacturing to services on the US gender wage gap between 1990 and 2001. The study finds that the widening of the gender wage gap in the service sector caused a slowdown in the narrowing of the US gender wage gap. Within the service sector, two occupational elements affected the growing gender wage gap: women's entry into traditionally male occupations characterized by high wages and high gender wage differentials that resulted in the relative increase in men's wages compared to women's wages in these occupations.