Devaluation for whom? Feminization and wages in an economically polarized labor market, 2003–2019

Abstract

Abstract Scholars have found that as the proportion of female workers in an occupation grows, wages generally decline. Yet, we know little about how this gender inequality intersects with other labor market inequalities. This study evaluates the feminization-wage relationship of an increasingly economically polarized post-2000 US labor market. First, I hypothesize that the negative effect of feminization on wages has diminished in high-skilled occupations due to the declining prejudice against (highly educated) women and increasing requirements for higher education, which functions as a form of social closure. Second, because of the increasing demand for “people skills” in higher-skilled occupations and their association with women, workers in higher-skilled occupations that require these skills may experience positive effects of feminization on wages. Not all people skills, however, are associated with women and similarly rewarded. Thus, I examine three people skills—persuasion, managerial, and sociability—that have different gender stereotypes. I test hypotheses using occupational-level fixed-effects models with individual-level data from the American Community Survey 2003–2019 (N = 15,996,526) and time-varying occupational-level data from the Occupational Information Network 2003–2019 (N = 460). Results show that for workers in occupations requiring more than sixteen years of education, feminization corresponds with higher wages. Additionally, the positive feminization-wage relationship is larger in occupations with a high demand for a gender-neutral people skill, persuasion. This moderation effect is not found for sociability and managerial skills, which are associated with women and men, respectively. This study calls for greater attention to how labor market polarization has shaped gender inequality.