On the Natural Intelligence of Women: How the Feminization of Clerical Work Contributed to Gender Pay Equality in Early Twentieth Century Canada (With Louise Lamontagne)

Morris Altman ()

Chapter Chapter 14 in Lessons from a Successfully Export-Oriented, Resource-Rich Economy, 2022, pp 425-459 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The impact of labor market segmentation on gender pay inequality is investigated through the example of the feminization of clerical work in Canada in the 1900–1930 period. We find that female clerical workers were paid well above what they could earn in other sectors, although they were consistently paid less than male clerical workers, albeit they were catching-up. Given that women could seek market employment and had some freedom in realizing their occupational preferences, women flocked into clerical work. Nevertheless, the demand and skill requirements for female clerical workers sufficed to keep the female wage buoyant. Therefore, the feminization of clerical work had no negative impact the negative impact on the gender pay gap in the clerical occupation. Rather, it contributed towards reducing the overall gender pay gap in the pre-Depression period. The sources of gender pay inequality, therefore, must be situated outside the domain of labor market segmentation.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-03887-7_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031038877

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-03887-7_14

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().