Wage Inequality between Male and Female University Graduates: The Influence of Occupational Specialization, Female-Dominated Subjects and Occupational Segregation

This article looks into explanations for the wage inequalities between male and female higher education graduates by examining three different explanations: first, the human capital explanation, which claims that women's financial disadvantages on the labor market are due to their choice of less occupation-specific fields of study; second, the hypothesis of the devaluation of female-dominated subjects, as claimed in feminist cultural theories; and finally, the importance of occupational sex segregation for the gender wage gap as a function of the cultural devaluation of female-dominated occupations as well as national labor market institutions, such as the German system of collective bargaining. On basis of the HIS Absolventenpanel 1997 we estimate the gross monthly income of full-time employed men and women five years after graduation. Above all, the results support the assumption of a discrimination of female-dominated fields of studies and occupations, which explain 19 and 13 percent respectively of the gender wage gap among higher education graduates. The choice of a field of study with low occupational specificity, however, does not seem to have any influence on the income of either men or women.