More women, lower pay? Occupational sex composition, wages and wage growth

Abstract

Research consistently shows that the share of females in an occupation is negatively associated with wages, and this has frequently been interpreted as an expression of devaluation of women's work. However, few studies have described the detailed shape of the relationship between wages and occupational sex composition. Using Swedish register data from 2001 and 2003, I advance our understanding of the devaluation process by studying the functional form more closely in both the cross-section and panel. The analyses reveal a non-linear relationship between sex composition and wages, where the highest wages for both men and women are earned in sex-integrated occupations. Second, studying the wage payoffs of people moving across occupations with varying sex compositions shows that both sexes gain by moving to relatively sex-integrated occupations (about 25 to 54% female). © The Author(s) 2013.