Study Links Female-Dominated Occupations to Lower Salary Recommendations

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara examined whether the gender makeup of a job influences perceived pay. Participants evaluated a management-consulting position presented in three versions: one with 25 % women, another with 45 % women, and a third with 67 % women. After reading each description, respondents indicated the salary they believed the occupation should command. The experiment was designed to isolate gender composition while keeping all other job characteristics constant.

Newsweek

Across all three scenarios, participants consistently proposed lower compensation for the versions with a higher proportion of female workers. On average, the recommended salary for the female-dominated description was nearly $1,000 less per year than for the male-leaning version. The pattern held for both male and female respondents, indicating that the devaluation was not limited to one gender’s judgments.

Newsweek

Catherine Taylor, associate professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara and lead author of the study, argued that the findings point to a cultural undervaluation of work associated with women rather than overt sexism. She suggested that public policy could address this bias by subsidizing care-related occupations—such as teaching, child care, nursing, and elder care—that are heavily female-staffed. Taylor also recommended that employers standardize compensation based on objective factors like education, experience, and qualifications, thereby reducing the influence of subjective gender-based judgments.

Newsweek

The study adds empirical support to a theory advanced in the 1990s by sociologist Paula England, which posits that occupations dominated by women are systematically undervalued. In the United States, women still earn approximately 85 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gap partly explained by women’s concentration in lower-paying fields. However, Taylor’s research suggests that even within the same occupation, a higher share of female workers can trigger lower salary expectations, reinforcing the overall disparity.

Newsweek

She called for voters and policymakers to consider subsidies and compensation standards as steps toward greater equity in the labor market.

Newsweek