Gender, Inequality, and Wages

In all Western societies women earn lower wages on average than men. The gender wage gap has existed for many years, although there have been some important changes over time. This volume of collected papers contains extensive research on progress made by women in the labor market, and the characteristics and causes of remaining gender inequalities. It also covers other dimensions of inequality and their interplay with gender, such as family formation, wellbeing, race, and immigrant status. The author was awarded the 2010 IZA Prize in Labor Economics for this research. Part I comprises an Introduction by the Editors. Part II probes and quantifies the explanations for the gender wage gap, including differential choices made in the labor market by men and women as well as labor market discrimination and employment segregation. It also delineates how the gender wage gap has decreased over time in the United States and suggests explanations for this narrowing of the gap and the more recent slowdown in wage convergence. Part III considers international differences in the gender wage gap and wage inequality and the relationship between the two. Part IV considers a variety of indicators of gender inequality and how they have changed over time in the United States, painting a picture of significant gains in women's relative status across a number of dimensions. It also considers the trends in female labor supply and what they indicate about changing gender roles in the United States and considers a successful intervention designed to increase the relative success of academic women. Part V focuses on inequality by race and immigrant status. It considers not only race difference in wages and the differential progress made by African-American women and men in reducing the race wage gap, but also race differences in wealth which are considerably larger than differences in wages. It also examines immigrant-native differences in the use of transfer payments, and the impact of gender roles in immigrant source countries on immigrant women's labor market assimilation in the U.S. labor market.

1 - Equal Pay in the Office
2 - Trends in Earnings Differentials by Gender
3 - Wage Structure and Gender Earnings Differentials: An International Comparison
4 - Understanding International Differences in the Gender Pay Gap
5 - International Differences in Male Wage Inequality: Institutions versus Market Forces
6 - Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980-2000
7 - Trends in the Well-Being of American Women: 1970-1995
8 - Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors? Interim Results from a Randomized Trial
9 - Black-White Earnings over the 1970s and 1980s: Gender differences in Trends
10 - Black-White Differences in Wealth and Asset Composition
11 - The Use of Transfer Payments by Immigrants
12 - Gender, Source Country Characteristics, and Labor Market Assimilation among Immigrants: 1980-2000

Francine D. Blau is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and her BS from Cornell University. She has served as President of the Society of Labor Economists and the Labor and Employment Association, as Vice President of the American Economic Association, and as Chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Labor Economics and the Journal of Labor Research. She is the author of Equal Pay in the Office (with L. Kahn), recipient of the Richard A. Lester Prize. In 2001 she was honored with the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She is the first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics.