You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, but You Still Have a Long Way to Go: Gender-Based Pay Inequality in U.S. State Bureaucracies, 1995-2015

• Author: Larra Rucker,Valerie H. Hunt,Brinck Kerr
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026019886332
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026019886332

Public Personnel Management

2020, Vol. 49(4) 571 –589

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026019886332

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Article

You’ve Come a Long Way,

Baby, but You Still Have a

Long Way to Go: Gender-

Based Pay Inequality in U.S.

State Bureaucracies, 1995-

2015

Valerie H. Hunt1, Larra Rucker1,

and Brinck Kerr1

Abstract

Previous research on gender-based inequality in public-sector state-level

bureaucracies finds evidence of glass ceilings and glass walls; however, previous

research does not evaluate these factors together, nor does this research extend

beyond the late 1990s. This study uses newly available data from the U.S. Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—data spanning from 1995 to 2015

that include the entire universe of female and male administrators—to evaluate

this research question: Are gender-based pay disparities and glass walls among

administrators in state-level bureaucracies related to the policy/program missions of

state agencies? This study observes administrative-level gender-based pay disparities

in all state agency types. Furthermore, this study finds evidence of occupational

segregation or glass walls in distributive and regulatory agencies, but not in

redistributive agencies. The findings indicate some progress for women; however,

as recently as 2015, U.S. state bureaucracies, on average, did not achieve gender

equity among their administrative ranks.

Keywords

state bureaucracies, sex-based pay equality, gender-based occupation segregation

1University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA

Corresponding Author:

Valerie H. Hunt, Political Science, Associate Director, Public Policy Ph.D. Program, University of

Arkansas, Gearhart Hall 119, 340 N. Campus Dr., Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA.

Email: vhunt@uark.edu

886332PPMXXX10.1177/0091026019886332Public Personnel ManagementHunt et al.

research-article2019

572 Public Personnel Management 49(4)

Introduction

Gender equality in the workplace is a broadly recognized goal in public administra-

tion. Toward this end, researchers continue to examine existing structural and organi-

zational barriers to employment access to (i.e., glass walls), and promotion within

(i.e., glass ceilings), public-sector organizations (Bullard & Wright, 1993; Choi, 2015;

Connell, 2006; Johnson & Crum-Cano, 2011; Kingsley, 1944; Lewis & Nice, 1994;

Miller, Kerr, & Reid, 1999; Newman, 1994; Reid, Kerr, & Miller, 2000; Smith &

Monaghan, 2013; Sneed, 2007). Put quite simply, glass walls operate to segregate

women into occupational positions based on their sex, while glass ceilings impede the

promotion of women within certain occupations based on their sex (Hunt, Rucker, &

Kerr, 2019; Kerr, Miller, & Reid, 2002). An important and related area of gender-

based pay equality scholarship involves examination of barriers to equal pay for equal

work, also referred to as gender-based salary disparities (Alkadry & Tower, 2006,

2011; Bishu & Alkadry, 2017; Blau & Kahn, 2006; Newman, 1994; Reid, Miller, &

Kerr, 2004). Several challenges limit the extent of this research including the type of

data and its corresponding accessibility as well as the type and/or level of public-sec-

tor organization under study. First, because obtaining state-level organizational data

entails a closed access data acquisition process,1 there are few empirical studies exam-

ining glass walls and/or ceilings in state-level bureaucracies (Kerr et al., 2002; Reid,

Kerr, & Miller, 2003). Administrative and professional positions in state-level bureau-

cracies are critically important as they offer women the greatest opportunity for finan-

cial rewards/security as well as access to policy-making influence and power (Hunt

et al., 2019; Kerr et al., 2002). Second, existing research demonstrates that the type of

organization or agency is critical to understanding employment access to, or advance-

ment within, an agency based on “gendered” arrangements within the agency’s struc-

ture, hiring practices, and policy outputs (Choi, 2015; Johnson & Crum-Cano, 2011;

Reid et al., 2004; Smith & Monaghan, 2013; Sneed, 2007). Perhaps these two chal-

lenges aggregate to limit the research necessary to critically examine the core of the

glass wall and ceiling metaphors in the public administration literature.

Some researchers find that the gender-based wage gap is narrower in the public

sector than it is in the private sector (Lewis, Boyd, & Pathak, 2018; Llorens, Kellough,

& Wenger, 2008). Particularly, there is a lack of adequate empirical research on issues

of gender pay gap in workplace authority in the public sector. Recently, several reports

claim that occupational segregation with salary disparities across employment sectors

is considered one of the leading combination of factors to gender pay inequality

(American Association of University Women, 2018; Hegewisch & Hartmann, 2014).

Given the existing literature, this newer combinational inquiry, and current access

to the necessary and comparable state-level public employment data, this study exam-

ines gender-based pay equity at the highest levels, administrators and officials, in

state-level public-sector bureaucracies in 49 states,2 from 1995 to 2015, the most

recent year for which data are available. Existing scholarship suggests that women

continue to have a difficult time breaking into these administrative ranks (Dey & Hill,

2007; Hegewisch & Hartmann, 2014; Kerr et al., 2002; Lewis et al., 2018; Reid,