IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v39y2025i1p185-201.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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
    ---><---

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.