Political Segregation in the Labor Market and the Persistence of Pay Gaps

Abstract

Many scholars assume that initiatives to promote gender and racial pay equality are largely performative, helping firms appear socially responsible while making little progress. However, the extent to which such initiatives are genuinely supported may depend on the ideological leaning of the field in which they occur. We propose that the higher the ratio of liberals in an industry or occupation, the more its members will be guided by logics that support the equal distribution of resources between gender and racial groups. Using large-scale archival samples of U.S. employees and recent data on U.S. firms and nonprofit organizations, we find support for our theory. The results indicate that membership in liberal-leaning industries and occupations is associated with stronger support for the use of pro-equality practices. Liberal-leaning industries and occupations also showed greater progress toward gender and racial pay equality over time. Notably, we controlled for various alternative explanations, such as demographic and geographic differences between fields. Thus, this paper suggests that the political composition of a field may give rise to logics and norms that shape how efforts to promote group equality are understood and pursued.