The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017

Hadas Mandel, Assaf Rotman

Sociological Science April 11, 2022
10.15195/v9.a6


The steep rise of top wages is acknowledged as one of the main drivers of the rise in earnings inequality between workers in most postindustrial labor markets. Yet its relation to gender stratification, in particular to the stagnation in the gender pay gap, has received very little scholarly attention. Using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, conducted between 1980 and 2017, we provide evidence of the enormous weight that the dynamic at the top of the earnings distribution exerts on the gender pay gap. We also show how this dynamic inhibits the consequences of the countervailing process of gender vertical desegregation. Although developments in gender inequality and in the rise of top wages have drawn extensive scholarly attention and have even penetrated into the public discourse in recent years, the two dimensions of inequality are often perceived as unrelated to one another. Our findings, then, highlight the connection between different forms of inequality—class inequality and gender inequality—a relation that demands much more attention in the new economy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Hadas Mandel: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: hadasm@tauex.tau.ac.il

Assaf Rotman: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: assafrot@tauex.tau.ac.il

Acknowledgments: We thank Amit Lazarus and Michael Shalev for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was funded by the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 724351). Authors are listed in alphabetical order, reflecting their equal contribution.

  • Citation: Mandel, Hadas, and Assaf Rotman. 2022. “The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017.” Sociological Science 9: 136-158.
  • Received: December 8, 2021
  • Accepted: January 26, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a6


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