Does Feminization Always Lead to Declines in Earnings? Evidence from China’s Marketization (1988 to 2013)

ABSTRACT

One explanation of increasing gender earnings inequality during China’s marketization is the increasing representation of women in industries and occupations in which, on average, earnings are declining. I argue that focusing on the average relationship between feminization and earnings is insufficient to understand complex changes in gender inequality during this period. I hypothesize that the feminization-earnings relationship may vary by industry because of differences in devaluation, social closure, and earnings-setting mechanisms. The hypotheses are tested using data from the China Household Income Project (1988– 2013) in industry-province level fixed-effects models. Results support the hypotheses that focus on industry-specific contexts. Specifically, feminization is not negatively associated with earnings in state-monopolized industries, where earnings are protected, and finance-insurance industries, where high-skilled female-typed skills have been increasingly in demand. I discuss implications for understanding segregation amongst the highly educated.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial sex segregation
• feminization and earnings
• China
• marketization

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Jennifer L. Hook, Daniel Schrage, Morgan Polikoff, Jenny Chio, Emily Smith-Greenaway, Ann Owens, Eunjeong Paek, the Sociological Quarterly editors Michael A. Long, Andrew S. Fullerton, and Jonathan S. Coley, and Sociological Quarterly reviewers for their comments and assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2023.2228366.

Notes

1. I use “province” broadly to refer to both province and municipality for four big cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Tianjin. Similar to provinces, municipalities are under the direct administration of the central government and are in the first tier of administrative division.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meiying Li

Meiying Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include gender, stratification, economic sociology, work-family policies, and quantitative methods. Her dissertation examines the linkage between occupational feminization and the gender wage gap in the economically polarized, post-2000 U.S. labor market, and how work-family policies have affected the relationship between occupational feminization and wages in European countries. She has published articles in the European Sociological Review and Journal of Urban Health.