Cumulative Disadvantage and Gender Disparities in Life-Course Career Trajectories

• In Event: 127 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 08. Mobility

Abstract

Scholars have argued women’s lifetime dual participation in paid (employment) and unpaid (family) domains limits their occupational mobility and constrains them to the lower- income margin. However, fewer studies examine the cumulative disadvantage in occupational career that women experience through their life course. The current study has two major objectives: 1) to detect the pertinence of life course stratification of occupational status and occupational mobility for both men and women; 2) to examine whether cumulative advantage processes account for the gender disparities in life course career trajectory.
Using five waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamic (PSID) and multivariate analysis, we found that women report lower employment rates and occupational status, face higher risks of downward mobility, but experience greater chances of upward mobility than men. These gender disparities compound with cohort, age and race. The general pattern of women's very low employment rates mainly result from their traditional family responsibilities. The gender gaps of occupational status and downward occupational mobility, on the one hand, are mainly explained by women' lower SES and marital status, and by the unequal protective effects from marriage and occupation. Women's greater chances of upward mobility, on the other hand, are largely explained by their generally much lower occupational status and by the greater rewards of occupation and income on upward mobility. The dominant life course theory of cumulative advantage processes is not supported in the gender inequality in occupational career.

Authors

• Li Zheng, Sichuan University

• Xuhui Zeng, Sichuan Academy of Social Science

• Jeralynn Sittig Cossman, Mississippi State University