Women and Wages Worldwide: How the National Proportion of Working Women Brings Underpayment into the Organization

Abstract

Many employees are underpaid relative to their country's level of wealth. In agreement with social identity theory principles extended to the national level, our 59-nation study uncovered that this form of wealth-referenced underpayment is associated with the proportion of working women. In countries with a relatively small or relatively large proportion of female workers, all workers are underpaid to the extent that merit pay and strikes are relatively rare. Payroll taxes, labour supply, unemployment rate, collective bargaining power, and the national wage gap could not disconfirm the results. We discuss how these country-level findings may innovate theory building on the impact of female worker proportion, merit pay, and strikes on payment in occupations, departments, and organizations.

Cross-cultural Differences in Compensation Level and Inequality across Occupations: A Set-theoretic Analysis

“…To give another example, future research could consider gender composition of different occupations, as gender distinctions are profound aspects of social structures, organizational processes, and compensation systems (Benschop and Dooreward 1998;Blau and Ferber 1986;Van de Vliert and Van der Vegt 2004). Women as a group generally earn less than men in the industrialized world, although the magnitude of this gender gap varies across countries (Blau and Ferber 1986;Rosenfeld and Kalleberg 1991), as do patterns of occupational segregation by gender (Charles 1992;Estevez-Abe 2006).…”

Examining the boundary conditions of tokenism: within-occupation gender wage gaps and female representation in the Canadian labor market

“…More aligned with the present investigation, alternatively, is the stream of the wage gap literature that focuses on the proportion of women in the occupational category or upper management role as a way to better understand the incongruity in gender composition and outcomes like pay discrimination (Van de Vliert and Van der Vegt, 2004). For example, such studies include the examination of how the proportion of women residing within high managerial-level positions influences salaries of nonmanagers (Halldén et al.…”

Advocating the use of threshold effects estimation: An illustration using the gender wage gap

“…However, more related to the present study includes the gender wage gap literature that focuses on the proportion of women in the workplace, job category, or leadership role as a way to better understand the discrepancy. Examples include the examination of gender composition and pay discrimination (Van de Vliert & Van der Vegt, 2004), board gender diversity and firm performance (Wiley & Monllor‐Tormos, 2018), wages of nonmanagers as a function of women residing within high managerial level positions (Cohen & Huffman, 2007), wage growth across time and focusing on a designated age span (Dex et al, 2008), and the female–male earnings ratio at lower, middle, and upper levels of employment (Blau & Kahn, 2007; Blau & Kahn, 2017). Studies addressing concerns of having the appropriate or “correct” number of women in order to affect policy (Wiley & Monllor‐Tormos, 2018) are often derived from critical mass theory, which examines proportional compositions of groups as a way to understand collective behaviors (Joecks, Pull, & Vetter, 2013; Kanter, 1977).…”