Using the historical random assignment of MBA students to peer groups at a top business school in the United States, I study the effect of the gender composition of a student's peers on the gender pay gap at graduation and long-term labor market outcomes. I find that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of male peers leads to a 2.1 percent…

Policy makers, academics, and media reports suggest that women could shrink the gender pay gap by negotiating more effectively for higher compensation. Yet women entering compensation negotiations face a dilemma: They have to weigh the benefits of negotiating against the social consequences of having negotiated. Research shows that women are…

It's been said that men are paid more than women are paid over their lifetimes. But what does that mean? Are women paid less because they choose lower-paying jobs? Is it because more women work part time than men do? Or is it because women tend to be the primary caregivers for their children? AAUW's "The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay…

The author did not expect to be surprised or disturbed by the data from the latest Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) salary survey; however, she was. CASE has been conducting the survey since 1982, so she assumed the findings would mirror her own salary history and those of her peers. While she suspected that older women…

We assess the impact of the welfare state on cross-national variation in the gender wage gap. Earnings inequality between men and women is conceptualized as resulting from their different locations in the class hierarchy, combined with the severity of wage differentials between and within classes. This decomposition contributes to identifying…

We analyze the female-male gap in starting-salary offers for new college graduates using data from the annual surveys of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), unique (and proprietary) data that have not previously been used for this purpose. A major advantage of working with a data set on salaries for new college graduates is…