Using the IPUMS-USA data for the years 1960–2015, this study examines trends in the effect of occupational feminization on occupational pay in the U.S. labor market and explores some of the mechanisms underlying these trends. The findings show that the (negative) association between occupational feminization and occupational pay level has declined, becoming insignificent in 2015. This trend, however, is reversed after education is controlled for at the individual as well as the occupational level. The two opposite trends are discussed in light of the twofold effect of education: (1) the entry of women into occupations requiring high education, and (2) the growing returns to education and to occupations with higher educational requirements. These two processes have concealed the deterioration in occupational pay following feminization. The findings underscore the significance of structural forms of gender inequality in general, and occupational devaluation in particular.
Mandel, Hadas. 2018. “A Second Look at the Process of Occupational Feminization and Pay Reduction in Occupations”. Demography, 55(2): 669-690.
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The comparative research of long-term trends of gender inequality largely neglects structural mechanisms. As more women reach positions of power, structural elements will become more significant. Despite the growing body of literature in this area, the long-term effect of the changing gender composition of occupations on their relative pay has been largely neglected. Hadas Mandel, an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, has addressed this gap in the literature by exploring the negative effect of occupational feminisation on occupational pay in the US and the mechanisms underlying these trends.
Mandel, Hadas, 2019. "Gender inequality: occupational devaluation and pay gaps". Research outreach, 106: 66-69.
This paper explores cross-country variation in the relationship between division of housework and
wives’ relative economic contribution. Using ISSP 2012 data from 19 countries, we examined the effect
of two contextual factors: women’s employment rates, which we link to economic exchange theories;
and gender ideology context, which we link to cultural theories. In line with economic-based theories,
economic exchange between housework and paid work occurs in all countries—but only in
households which follow normative gender roles. However, and consistent with the cultural-based
theory of ‘doing gender’, wives undertake more housework than their spouses in all countries—even if they are the main or sole breadwinners. This universal gendered division of housework is significantly
more salient in more conservative countries; as the context turns more conservative, the gender
gap becomes more pronounced, and the relationship between paid and unpaid work further
removed from the economic logic. In gender egalitarian societies, in contrast, women have more
power in negotiating housework responsibilities in non-normative gender role households. In contrast
to gender ideology, the cross-country variations in women’s employment did not follow the expectations
that derive from the economic exchange theory.
Mandel, Hadas, Amit Lazarus and Maayan Shaby. 2020. "Economic
Exchange or Gender Identities? Housework Division and Wives’ Economic
Dependency in Different Contexts". European Sociological Review, 36(6): 831-851.
Individuals who espouse an egalitarian gender ideology as well as economically independent women benefit from a more egalitarian division of housework. Although these two individual-level characteristics affect the gender division of housework, each suggests a different mechanism; the former is anchored within an economic logic and the latter within a cultural one. Using data of 25 countries from the 2002 and 2012 “Family and Changing Gender Roles” modules of the International Social Survey Program, we examine whether a country’s mean gender ideology and women’s labor force participation (WLFP) rate have a distinct contextual effect beyond these individual-level effects. We predict that the division of housework between married or cohabitating partners will be more egalitarian in countries with higher WLFP rates and in countries with more egalitarian attitudes, even after controlling for the two variables at the individual level. Given the cross-country convergence in WLFP, but not in gender ideology, we expect the effect of WLFP to decline over time and the effect of gender ideology to remain salient. Indeed, our multi-level analysis indicates that the net effect of WLFP, which was evident in 2002, had disappeared by 2012. By contrast, the net contextual effect of gender ideology, which was not significant in 2002, had become an important determinant of housework division by 2012. We conclude that further changes will depend on a country’s prevalent gender ideology because the equalizing effect of WLFP on the division of housework may have reached its limit.
Mandel, Hadas and Amit Lazarus. 2021. "Contextual Effects on the Gendered Division of Housework: A Cross-Country and Cross-Time Analysis". Sex Roles, 85(3): 205-220.
Seeking to understand the role played by labor market structure in affecting economic inequality, we examine the extent to which the public sector, as compared to the private sector, differentially employs and rewards women, Blacks and subgroups classified by race and gender (e.g., Black women, Black men). Analyzing data from the American Community Survey (2014–2015), we find that public-sector employment is more attractive for Blacks than for women; Blacks’ odds of becoming public-sector employees are much higher than those of Whites, regardless of gender. No evidence was found for the argument that gender interacts with race in affecting the tendency to work in the public sector. As for wages, despite recent trends pointing to a decline in the advantages of the public sector for Blacks, it is still found to be more protective of Blacks, men and women alike. The meaning of the findings and their implications are discussed in light of structural barriers of gender and race inequality.
Social Stratification and Mobility, 71: 100581.
The expansion of women’s educational attainment may seem to be a
promising path toward achieving economic equality between men and women, given
the consistent rise in the economic value of higher education. Using yearly data
from 1980 to 2017, we provide an updated and comprehensive examination of the
gender gap in education premiums, showing that it is not as promising as it could
and should be. Women receive lower rewards to their higher education across the
entire wage distribution, and this gender gap increases at the very top education
premiums—the top quarter and, even more so, the top decile. Moreover, insufficient
theoretical and methodological attention to this top premium effect has left gender
inequality concealed in the extensive empirical studies on the topic. Specifically,
when we artificially censor the top at the 80th wage percentile, the gender gaps in
education premium reverse. Lastly, the growth in earnings inequality in the United
States, which is greatly affected by the expansion of top earnings, is associated with
the growing gender gap in education premiums over time. We discuss the meaning
and implications of this structural disadvantage at a time when women’s educational
advantage keeps growing and higher education remains the most important factor
for economic attainment.
Mandel, Hadas and Assaf Rotman. 2021. "Revealing the concealed effect of top earning on the gender gap in the economic value of higher education; USA 1980-2017". Demography 58(2): 551-570.
The steep rise of top wages is acknowledged as one of the main drivers of the rise in earnings inequality between workers in most postindustrial labor markets. Yet its relation to gender stratification, in particular to the stagnation in the gender pay gap, has received very little scholarly attention. Using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, conducted between 1980 and 2017, we provide evidence of the enormous weight that the dynamic at the top of the earnings distribution exerts on the gender pay gap. We also show how this dynamic inhibits the consequences of the countervailing process of gender vertical desegregation. Although developments in gender inequality and in the rise of top wages have drawn extensive scholarly attention and have even penetrated into the public discourse in recent years, the two dimensions of inequality are often perceived as unrelated to one another. Our findings, then, highlight the connection between different forms of inequality—class inequality and gender inequality—a relation that demands much more attention in the new economy.
Mandel, Hadas and Assaf Rotman. 2022. ״The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017״. Sociological Science, 9: 136-158.
The topic of gender blindness is increasingly gaining the attention of researchers. Even in fields that do not commonly engage with gender, gender blindness has been recognized as a factor that has potential to limit the validity of research findings. This article explores the prevalence and implications of gender blindness in quantitative research for political science outcomes. We first reanalyze three articles recently published in the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) to illustrate the impact of gender blindness on quantitative research. Next, we classify all articles with quantitative methodology published in the AJPS in 2018 and 2019 by the degree of gender blindness in the research design. Our findings demonstrate how gender blindness impacts outcomes and estimate its prevalence in political science. They show that accounting for gender yields more accurate results and facilitates a better understanding of political behavior and phenomena.
Forman-Rabinovici, Aliza and Hadas Mandel. 2023. "The Prevalence and Implications of Gender Blindness in Quantitative Political Science Research". Politics & Gender, 19(2): 482-506.
This paper challenges the predominant conceptualization of the wage structure as gender-neutral, emphasizing the contribution that this makes to the gender wage gap. Unlike most decomposition analyses, which concentrated on gender differences in productivity-enhancing characteristics (the ‘explained’ portion), we concentrate on the ‘wage structure’ (the ‘unexplained’ portion), which can be defined as the market returns to productivity-enhancing characteristics. These returns are commonly considered a reflection of non-gendered economic forces of supply and demand, and gender differences in these returns are attributed to market failure or measurement error. Using PSID data on working-age employees from 1980 to 2010, we examine gender differences in returns to education and work experience in the U.S. labor market. Based on a threefold decomposition, we estimate the contribution of these differences to the overall pay gap. The results show that men’s returns to education and work experience are higher than women’s; and that in contrast to the well-documented trend of narrowing gender gaps in skills and earnings, the gaps in returns increase over time in men’s favor. Furthermore, the existing gender differences in returns to skills explain a much larger proportion of the gender wage gap than differences in levels of education and experience between men and women. The paper discusses the mechanisms underlying these findings.
Rotman, Assaf and Hadas Mandel. 2023. "Gender-Specific Wage Structure and the Gender Wage Gap in the U.S. Labor Market". Social Indicators Research , 165(2): 585-606.
Research on the division of housework among same-sex partners is limited. This is because gender-cultural theories – which emphasize the significance of gender identity and motivate many studies on the topic – are implicitly assumed to be less relevant in this case. Attending to admonitions that the division of housework in same-sex households is not free from gendering processes and practices, in this study we use the high-quality data of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS; 2003-2019), to compare the association between housework and relative earnings across partnership types. Since gender-cultural theories are based on the performance of gender identity by different-sex partners, we utilize the differences between same- and different-sex partners to better understand the effect of gender-cultural determinants on the division of housework. Our comparison of the relation across partnership-types validates the power of gender-cultural mechanisms in different-sex partners, provides a better assessment of the differences in housework patterns between different types of households, and serves as a novel quantitative test of gender-cultural mechanisms in same-sex partners.
Lazarus, Amit and Hadas Mandel. 2023. "The Allocation of Housework in Same- and Different-Sex Partnerships: Recent Evidence from the U.S". Sex Roles, 89(7-8): 394-408.
Women have been underrepresented, and even excluded from academic life throughout history. As countries look to address ongoing inequality in academia, state-mandated gender quotas for academic boards and committees have emerged as a recommended practice in Europe. Although an increasing number of countries have adopted this policy model, little is known about its efficacy or consequences. Using country-level panel data from 25 European countries between 2003 and 2018, we explore the consequences of quotas on different measures of gender in/equality in academia. Findings indicate that quotas appear to achieve their intended direct effect of increasing the representation of women on academic boards, and this, in turn contributes to greater equality in academic staff and in senior professorship positions. Despite some concerns, there is little evidence that quotas incite a backlash.
Forman-Rabinovici, Aliza, Hadas Mandel and Anne Bauer. 2024. “Legislating gender equality in academia: direct and indirect effects of state-mandated gender quota policies in European academia”. Studies in Higher Education, 47(9): 1134-1150.
This study explores the influence of organizational practices on gender in/equality in a unique setting: the reformed Israeli kibbutz. The transition of the kibbutz from all members receiving an allowance to waged labor provides an opportunity to explore the impact of wage determination systems on gender pay inequality. The study uses a mixed-method approach: descriptive statistics of administrative data, in-depth interviews, and a focus group with kibbutz management. The findings demonstrate that a “market-based logic,” embedded with gendered preconceptions of “women’s work,” can seep into an organization through a shift in the wage determination system, and increase gender inequality. The findings also highlight the lack of organizational awareness about the gendered consequences of this shift, or even their uncritical acceptance of the “value hierarchy” as ordained by the market. The study thus supports the theory positing gender as a hidden but integral aspect of reward systems in contemporary labor markets.
Mandel, Hadas, Amit Lazarus and Adi Moreno. 2024. "The Value of Work: The Gendered Outcomes of Organizational Wage Reforms." Feminist
Economics.