Gender, Race, and Class in an Intersectional Framework: Occupations and Wages in the United States

The literature offers limited insights into the labor market experiences of women and men of different racial/ethnic groups by social class beyond considering their educational achievements or occupational status, common proxies for social class, or their positions on the wage distribution. This paper follows a different approach by thinking of class as life conditions at the family level, which we approximate with family income, and by exploring wages at the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, and family class. Dealing with “individuals in families,” this paper delves deeper into the stratification of women and racial minorities. Our analysis suggests that the “mark of gender” extends beyond race and class. No matter the social class to which individuals belong, women of any race/ethnicity receive conditional wages below the average wage of workers in the corresponding class. Our investigation also suggests that the racial wage penalty of Black women (vis-à-vis White women) stems from a stratification by class that penalizes them. When compared with individuals of the same class, Black women do not earn less than White women with similar characteristics do. On the contrary, the wage disadvantage of Black men (vis-à-vis White men) goes beyond class. No matter the class to which they belong, Black men have lower wages than comparable White men do because they tend to concentrate in occupations that pay less.