Double Disadvantage of Minority Women: Racialized Household Specialization and Earnings (Dis)advantage

• In Event: 3147 - Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in School, Work, and the Home

Abstract

While intersectionality literature suggests that minority women are doubly disadvantaged as a woman and as a racial minority, we have not seen empirical support for an additive disadvantage of minority women in the labor market. Instead of comparing the effects of gender and the effects of race in individual earnings, we approach the intersection of race and gender in the labor market with an emphasis on family context. Building on the previous literature, we hypothesize the relationship between racial differences in the household specialization and the intersection of race and gender in the labor market. Using the 2014-2018 American Community Survey (ACS), we show that the added disadvantage of minority women becomes evident when we look at equivalized income, or family economic standard of living, instead of personal earnings. Analyses of annual work hours reveal the tendency of whites being more likely to specialize when married. Specifically, married white women show lower hours of work when spouse earning is high. Results by age group, parenthood, and levels of education suggest that more specific and contextualized approach could benefit our understanding of how the intersection of race and gender play out in economic returns. Additional analyses show that the racial differences in household specialization create a mirrored pattern of earnings disadvantage across the earnings distribution where minority women are advantaged in personal earnings but disadvantaged in equivalized income at lower conditional quantiles. The added disadvantage of minority women lies not in the lower personal earning, but in the lower family economic standard of living despite their long work hours relative to white women. Additional analysis of the distribution of work hours reveals that white women's work hours are polarized compared to minority women, where white women are more likely to overwork. We discuss the implications.

Authors

• Andrew Kim, University of Kansas

• ChangHwan Kim, University of Kansas