Gender and economic outcomes.

• Author: Blau, Francine D.
• Position: Research Summaries

The past 20 years have seen decreasing gender differences in occupations and industries and, particularly in the 1980s, increasing relative earnings for women. Women's participation in the labor force also has continued to increase, as they have become more likely to work over most of their adult lives.(1) My research attempts to help us understand the sources of, and recent trends in, gender differences in economic outcomes. I also hope to shed light on the social consequences of the changes in gender roles that underlie these developments.

Overview of Trends

In recent years, both white and black women have narrowed the earnings gap relative to men of the same race. For white women, the annual earnings ratio adjusted for hours and weeks worked rose from 60 percent in 1971 to 74 percent in 1988. For black women relative to black men, the same ratio rose from 68 percent in 1971 to 86 percent in 1988. White women made slow progress relative to white men in the 1970s, and considerably more rapid progress in the 1980s. The pace of change for black women was more similar over the course of the two decades, but their earnings ratio did increase at a higher annual rate in the 1980s.(2) In addition, although the earnings of black men and women stagnated relative to whites of the same sex during the 1980s, black women continued to narrow the gap with white men over this period.(3) Occupational differences between males and females also narrowed over the 1970s and 1980s. The index of segregation, a measure of the proportion of women (or men) who would have to change jobs for the occupational distribution of the two sexes to be the same, fell from 67 to 57 percent between 1970 and 1987.(4) However, in this case, the pace of change was faster in the 1970s than in the 1980s. Women made particular progress in entering traditionally male managerial and professional jobs, and the fraction of older black women in private household occupations fell sharply.(5) Gender differences in industrial distribution also narrowed over the 1970s and 1980s, for both black and white women.(6)

Determinants of the Gender Earnings Gap

Traditionally there have been two primary explanations for the gender gap. First, women suffer from discrimination in the labor market. Second, because many women work part time, or drop out of and then reenter the work force, they have less human capital and are less productive than men of similar age and education. Both discrimination and...