The Value of Women's Work in Science Policy: Occupational Sex Segregation in Science Agencies and Pay

• In Event: 283 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Paper Session. Work, Careers, Organizations, and Labor Markets in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Fields

Abstract

Studies of gender inequality in science have not systematically considered the effects of occupational sex segregation, although it is known from decades of sociological research that a major source of inequality is because jobs predominately held by women are consistently paid less than those held by men. In this paper the focus is the workforce that controls the resources for many US scientists: employees of 8 major federal science policy agencies. In this unique dataset of 2.8 million federal employee records from 1994-2008, not only are the occupational and percent female in occupation variables available (along with controls for race, age, disability, education attainment, location), but also the agency specific occupational fixed effects in the models. Thus, another contribution is that this paper is one of a few US-based sex segregation studies to look at the significance of occupations within organizational contexts, although Petersen and Morgan (1995) showed the importance of this organization-based occupation focus nearly two decades ago. We find that, although these are government contexts where gender inequality is expected to be less, women’s work is consistently devalued and occupational sex segregation is a major source of income inequality among science policymakers. Importantly, there are different gendered earnings effects by agency, raising the question of how STEM policy agencies may vary in their influence on gender inequalities in the national science fields they support.

Authors

• Laurel Smith-Doerr, University of Massachusetts

• Sharla N. Alegria, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Kaye Husbands Fealing, University of Minnesota

• Debra Fitzpatrick, University of Minnesota

• Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, University of Massachusetts