It’s a common assumption that more women are hired for roles requiring “social skills,” such as relationship-building or managing interpersonal tasks. These jobs — like nursing or teaching — are often seen as less prestigious or lower-paying compared to the roles men dominate. However, new research from Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli challenges this assumption and reveals a brighter picture: gender inequality in the U.S. economy is, encouragingly, improving.
The research, published in the Human Resource Management journal, finds that American women do indeed hold more jobs requiring social skills. But here’s the rub: these roles come with a pay premium — sometimes even greater than for men in similar positions.
“That is the best news to come out of the research,” said Cappelli. “Because a lot of people assume that women are just crowded into ‘social’ jobs, and that society devalues those skills. But here, the data show that’s not really the case.”
Developments in Gender Income Inequality in the U.S.
The study shows a myriad of positive developments in the world’s largest economy: The younger generation of American women at age 30 now hold jobs closer in skill, knowledge, and ability to their male counterparts, unlike their colleagues who are 15 years older where the gap with men actually worsened over their careers. This suggests a decrease in discrimination over time. Yet, gender income inequality persists, raising important questions about its root causes and what still needs to change.
Co-authored with academics Shoshana Schwartz and Yang Yang, the study examines gender disparities by looking at differences in jobs held by men and women, based on their requirements for three key factors: knowledge, skills, and abilities — something the authors say no other researchers have done before.
“If we want to advance gender equity, pay should be based on job requirements, not just job titles.”— Shoshana Schwartz
The paper offers a fresh perspective on how workplace inequalities are changing and what this means for policymakers and employers alike. For one, Cappelli suggests that the focus on job differences as an explanation for the gender pay gap is increasingly hard to justify. And, for employers, the persistence of the pay gap despite diminishing job differences raises awkward questions.
“The implication would be to worry about why the pay gap is still there when the skill gap is not,” said Cappelli, director of the Wharton Center for Human Resources. “Women in this study are being paid less than men for jobs with basically identical skill and job requirements. It’s one thing to have identical jobs and another to perform at the same level, of course.”
“If we want to advance gender equity, pay should be based on job requirements, not just job titles,” added Schwartz, who led the study as a Wharton PhD student. “Our research supports a fresh look at comparable worth policies.”
The Gender Pay Gap Persists Despite Job Improvements
The pay gap is persistent and perplexing: American women typically earn 82 cents for every dollar made by men, largely unchanged from 2002. But since the differences in jobs between men and women have narrowed significantly and no longer fully account for the gap, Cappelli’s research suggests other factors are at play.
Using data from two nationally representative cohorts of American college graduates (from 1994 and 2009), the researchers tracked the career trajectories of these individuals over a decade, showing how job requirements and opportunities have changed over time for men and women.
For the 1994 cohort of college graduates, women’s jobs typically required less knowledge and skill than men’s at the start of their careers, and this gap widened over time. By contrast, in the 2009 cohort, the gap started larger but narrowed almost completely over the decade, indicating meaningful progress towards gender equality in the U.S. economy.
“Even for college graduates who are otherwise identical, including their majors, women were in jobs that demanded less in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities — that is the big finding,” Cappelli said. “But the gap used to get worse for women, and now it narrows. The story is mainly positive.”
“Women in this study are being paid less than men for jobs with basically identical skill and job requirements.”— Peter Cappelli
Potential Solutions to Gender Inequality at Work
The research also tested another theory: whether women who remain with the same employer experience faster career advancement compared to those who frequently change jobs. Known as the “contact hypothesis,” this theory posits that staying in one workplace reduces discrimination.
However, the scholars’ findings show no significant advantage for women who stay put, challenging long-held views about the value of workplace tenure for gender equity.
The study also highlights that the biggest difference between men’s and women’s jobs lies in the “skills” category — abilities gained through practice and hands-on experience. In comparison, there’s a much smaller gap in “cognitive ability,” which involves tasks requiring creativity and often includes elements of social interaction.
This suggests that while men and women perform similarly in roles requiring mental and social skills, women may face fewer opportunities to build expertise through practical experience.
“Giving them more opportunities to develop skills would make sense if we thought that the reason they were not in those jobs requiring more skill now is because they didn’t have the skill already,” Cappelli said. “But if we thought discrimination or bias was responsible, then giving them more developmental opportunities wouldn’t matter.”
Schwartz said, “Employers committed to gender equity should conduct audits of their hiring and promotion practices, ensuring women are not disproportionately placed in lower-skill jobs and are paid equitably for similar work.”
Ultimately, the research provides a more detailed understanding of gender disparities in the American workplace. While the findings show progress in reducing discrimination and narrowing job differences, they also underscore the need for continued research into the unexplained drivers of the pay gap.
