IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v39y2025i1p185-201.html

Characteristics or Returns: Understanding Gender Pay Inequality among College Graduates in the USA

Author

Listed:
  • Joanna Dressel

    (The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA)

  • Paul Attewell

    (The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA)

  • Liza Reisel

    (Institute for Social Research, Norway)

  • Kjersti Misje Østbakken

    (Institute for Social Research, Norway)

Abstract

Explanations for the persistent pay disparity between similarly qualified men and women vary between women’s different and devalued work characteristics and specific processes that result in unequal wage returns to the same characteristics. This article investigates how the gender wage gap is affected by gender differences in detailed work activities among full-time, year-round, college-graduate workers in the US using decomposition analysis in the National Survey of College Graduates. Differences in men’s and women’s characteristics account for a majority of the gender wage gap. Additionally, men and women receive different returns to several characteristics: occupational composition, marriage and work activities. While men are penalized more than women for having teaching as their primary work activity, women receive lower rewards for primary work activities such as finance and computer programming. The findings suggest that even with men and women becoming more similar on several characteristics, unequal returns to those characteristics will stall progress towards equality.

Suggested Citation

  • Joanna Dressel & Paul Attewell & Liza Reisel & Kjersti Misje Østbakken, 2025. "Characteristics or Returns: Understanding Gender Pay Inequality among College Graduates in the USA," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 39(1), pages 185-201, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:1:p:185-201
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170241245329
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170241245329
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09500170241245329?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    2. M. Christl & Monika Köppl–Turyna, 2020. "Gender wage gap and the role of skills and tasks: evidence from the Austrian PIAAC data set," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(2), pages 113-134, January.
    3. England, Paula, 1999. "The case for comparable worth," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 743-755.
    4. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
    5. Harris, Jorgen, 2022. "Do wages fall when women enter an occupation?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    6. M. Teresa Cardador, 2017. "Promoted Up But Also Out? The Unintended Consequences of Increasing Women’s Representation in Managerial Roles in Engineering," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 597-617, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Susanna Bairoh & Satu Pyöriä & Niklas Mäkinen, 2026. "Disaggregating Gender Income Disparities in STEM: Cohort and Family Factors in a Nordic Welfare State," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 40(1), pages 113-134, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ransmayr Juliane & Weichselbaumer Doris, 2024. "The Role of Sex Segregation in the Gender Wage Gap Among University Graduates in Germany," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 244(1-2), pages 37-81, February.
    2. Wazah Pello-Esso & Ulf Gerdtham & Sara Larsson Lönn & Jan Sundquist & Kristina Sundquist, 2025. "Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Sweden: Do Personality Traits Matter?," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 467-489, March.
    3. Francine D. Blau, 2025. "Gender Inequality in the Labor Market: Continuing Progress?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 78(2), pages 275-303, March.
    4. Jeremy Foltz & Vikas P. D. Gawai, 2026. "Discrimination in science: Salaries of foreign and U.S. born land‐grant university scientists," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 108(2), pages 706-736, March.
    5. Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2021. "The gender wage gap and the early‐career effect: the role of actual experience and education level," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 35(2), pages 135-162, June.
    6. Rahman, Mustafizur & Al-Hasan, Md., 2018. "Male-Female wage gap and informal employment in Bangladesh: A quantile regression approach," MPRA Paper 90131, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Waitkus, Nora & Minkus, Lara, 2021. "Investigating the gender wealth gap across occupational classes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108206, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Karla Meneses & Sarah J. Carrington & Gustavo Cuesta & Katherine Oleas, 2026. "The Rural-Urban Divide in Gender Wage Gaps: an Analysis of Ecuador," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 38(1), pages 118-147, February.
    9. Karen Mumford & Cristina Sechel, 2020. "Pay and Job Rank among Academic Economists in the UK: Is Gender Relevant?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 82-113, March.
    10. Paul David Boll & Lukas Mergele & Larissa Zierow, 2022. "The gender pay gap in university student employment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 2253-2313, October.
    11. Rick Glaubitz & Astrid Harnack-Eber & Miriam Wetter, 2022. "The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2001, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Mustafizur Rahman & Marzuka Md. Al-Hasan, 2019. "Women in Bangladesh Labour Market: Determinants of Participation, Gender Wage Gap and Returns to Schooling," CPD Working Paper 124, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
    13. Felipe Benguria & Josh Ederington, 2023. "Decomposing the effect of trade on the gender wage gap," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 1082-1120, August.
    14. Battisti, Michele & Kinne, Lavinia & Fedorets, Alexandra, 2022. "Cognitive Skills among Adults: An Impeding Factor for Gender Convergence?," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264110, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. René Böheim & Marian Fink & Christine Zulehner, 2021. "About time: the narrowing gender wage gap in Austria," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 803-843, November.
    16. Nathan Blascak & Anna Tranfaglia, 2021. "Decomposing Gender Differences in Bankcard Credit Limits," Working Papers 21-35, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    17. Larissa Fuchs & Pia Pinger & Philipp Seegers, 2025. "Relative Grades and Gender Differences in STEM Enrollment," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_633, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    18. Goedele Van den Broeck & Talip Kilic & Janneke Pieters, 2023. "Structural transformation and the gender pay gap in Sub-Saharan Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(4), pages 1-17, April.
    19. Tinh Doan & Liana Leach & Lyndall Strazdins, 2025. "The Economic Costs of Men's Long Work Hours for Women: Evidence on the Gender Wage Earnings Gap from Australia and Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 1073-1100, September.
    20. Christophe J Nordman & Leopold R Sarr & Smriti Sharma, 2019. "Skills, personality traits, and gender wage gaps: evidence from Bangladesh," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 71(3), pages 687-708.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:1:p:185-201. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.