Structural Sexism and Earnings Inequality: How the Devaluation of Women’s Work Shapes the Relative Earnings of New Parents in the United States
Kelly Musick, Cornell University
We (joint paper with Wonjeong Jeong, Cornell University) draw from gender perspectives on the division of labor and emerging research on structural sexism to conceptualize and operationalize systemic gender inequality and how it shapes within-couple earnings inequality following the transition to parenthood. Our data on pre- and post-birth earnings come from successive couple-level panels of the Current Population Survey over four decades, merged to U.S. state-level indicators that tap the devaluation of work done by women across multiple domains. Fixed effect models provide robust evidence that structural sexism exacerbates earnings inequality among parents, with implications for mothers’ economic vulnerability and well-being.
About the speaker:
Kelly Musick is Professor of Public Policy and Sociology and Senior Associate Dean of Research in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. She received her Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research broadly examines family change and social inequality, with a current focus on the intersection of parenthood, the structure of work and earnings, and social policy from a comparative perspective. It has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council.