WHERE SEX COMPOSITION MATTERS MOST: COMPARING THE EFFECTS OF JOB VERSUS OCCUPATIONAL SEX COMPOSITION ON EARNINGS.

In this analysis, we extend previous work by exploring whether the economic penalty associated with female representation is best conceptualized at the job--or occupational--level. If compensation is affected by sex composition of workers' immediate work setting, net of who per forms the work in the entire occupation, this informs us about how this type of wage discrimination occurs, our job-level findings suggest that who does a particular line of work in a specific organization is a much better predictor of compensation than who performs a line of work more generally, in occupational categories. At the individual level, despite numerous tests for interaction effects, we were unable to conclude that female representation in either jobs or occupations penalizes men and women differently. We conclude that job-level sex composition has the largest, most robust effect on earnings and accounts for a substantial proportion of the gender gap in earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]