In the battle of the sexes, the pay gap persists - EurekAlert!
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Paula England's 1990s theory says jobs pay less simply because women do them — and decades of data suggest the pattern still holds today.
Occupational Devaluation TheoryGender Wage GapStructural DiscriminationLabor Market Segmentation
Theory Briefing
- Sociologist Paula England proposed in the mid-1990s that entire occupations lose pay status when women enter them in large numbers.
- Occupational devaluation theory argues the wage penalty follows the worker's gender, not the job's actual skill or social value.
- The persistence of the gap across decades challenges the idea that free labor markets naturally correct for discrimination.
- The theory reframes the pay gap as a structural bias baked into how society prices work, not just individual career choices.