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Explaining Women?s Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women?s Work

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Author Info
Black, Sandra E.
Spitz-Oener, Alexandra

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Abstract

The closing of the gender wage gap is an ongoing phenomenon in industrialized countries. However, research has been limited in its ability to understand the causes of these changes, due in part to an inability to directly compare the work of women to that of men. In this study, we use a new approach for analyzing changes in the gender pay gap that uses direct measures of job tasks and gives a comprehensive characterization of how work for men and women has changed in recent decades. Using data from West Germany, we find that women have witnessed relative increases in nonroutine analytic tasks and non-routine interactive tasks, which are associated with higher skill levels. The most notable difference between the genders is, however, the pronounced relative decline in routine task inputs among women with little change for men. These relative task changes explain a substantial fraction of the closing of the gender wage gap. Our evidence suggests that these task changes are driven, at least in part, by technological change. We also show that these task changes are related to the recent polarization of employment between low and high skilled occupations that we observed in the 1990s.

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Paper provided by ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number 07-033.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5692

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  1. Levy, Frank & Murnane, Richard J, 1992. "U.S. Earnings Levels and Earnings Inequality: A Review of Recent Trends and Proposed Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1333-81, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Bruce Weinberg, 1998. "Computer Use and the Demand for Women Workers," Working Papers 98-06, Ohio State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Sandra E. Black & Chinhui Juhn, 2000. "The Rise of Female Professionals: Are Women Responding to Skill Demand?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 450-455, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2006. "The Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 189-194, May. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2005. "Unequal pay or unequal employment? A cross-country analysis of gender gaps," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2005-008, Boston University - Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2003. "Understanding International Differences in the Gender Pay Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 106-144, January. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 7-72, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Finis Welch, 2000. "Growth in Women's Relative Wages and in Inequality among Men: One Phenomenon or Two?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 444-449, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2003. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: the Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," CEP Discussion Papers dp0604, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Bernd Fitzenberger & Gaby Wunderlich, 2002. "Gender Wage Differences in West Germany: A Cohort Analysis," German Economic Review, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 3(4), pages 379-414, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. David Autor & Frank Levy & Richard Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2006. "Technical Change, Job Tasks, and Rising Educational Demands: Looking outside the Wage Structure," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 235-270, April. [Downloadable!]
  13. Katz, Lawrence F. & Autor, David H., 1999. "Changes in the wage structure and earnings inequality," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1463-1555 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Weber, Andrea Maria, 2007. "An Evaluation of Single and Mixed Gender Computer Science Classes," Diskussionspapiere der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Hannover dp-369, Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät. [Downloadable!]
  2. Cavalcanti, Tiago & Tavares, José, 2007. "The Output Cost of Gender Discrimination: A Model-Based Macroeconomic Estimate," CEPR Discussion Papers 6477, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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