Gender-Typed Occupations, Industries, and College Majors, and Sexual Orientation Wage Gaps

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 5: Gender and Work

Abstract

The increasing availability of data on sexual minorities, alongside changing societal and legal contexts, has facilitated a growing body of research on sexual orientation in the labor market, including studies on occupational segregation and wage disparities. Prior work documents that sexual minorities are more likely to work in occupations and industries dominated by the opposite gender and are overrepresented in the public sector. Correspondingly, research consistently finds a gender-asymmetric association between sexuality and wages: non-heterosexual men tend to experience a wage penalty, whereas non-heterosexual women often earn more than their heterosexual counterparts.

This study seeks to integrate these literatures by examining how the distribution of sexual minorities across gender-typed occupations, industries, and fields of study contributes to wage disparities. Specifically, it investigates whether sexual minorities are more likely to enter gender-atypical fields and occupations, whether the gender-typicality of their fields of study shapes their occupational and industrial choices, and whether these patterns help explain wage gaps.

Using data from the 2021–2023 American Community Survey, I construct matched samples of men and women in same-sex and different-sex cohabiting relationships via propensity score matching. Logistic regression predicts employment in male- and female-dominated occupations, industries, and fields of study. I employ Fairlie decomposition to assess the contribution of educational fields to occupational segregation and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to evaluate the role of gender-typed employment in shaping wage disparities.

Findings illuminate the interplay of sexual orientation, gender-typed educational and occupational pathways, and labor market outcomes, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of inequality at the intersection of gender and sexuality in contemporary U.S. labor markets

Author

• Daniel Fried, Tel-Aviv University