(International Journal of Management, 1989-06) Fryxell, Gerald E.; Mentzer, Marc S.
The "comparable worth" controversy has raised the issue of the fairness of labor markets: Are predominantly female occupations paid less than predominantly male occupations because they are less demanding, or because they are predominantly female? Unfortunately, previous methodologies have failed to account for complex interactions among such variables as seasonality, education, and the different facets of job difficulty. In this paper a causal modeling approach on U.S. data is used in an attempt to disentangle these multiple effects. The results indicate that the strongest direct effects on occupational earnings is educational attainment; this is followed by labor force stability, male domination, and least of all, job difficulty. The results indicate that the female composition of an occupation has a large and negative direct effect on earnings and has a greater overall influence than job difficulty.
