Working for the Woman ? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap

increases in the proportion of women in management. During this time, women’s representation in managerial occupations increased from about one-third to one-half.1 These positions confer well-documented benefits, including improved status, wages, autonomy, and overall work experience (England et al. 1994; Reskin and Ross 1992). In recent years, a spate of empirical research has addressed women’s access to managerial authority (Blum, Fields, and Goodman 1994; Huffman and Cohen 2004a; Reskin and McBrier 2000; Smith 2002) and the “glass ceiling”—an unseen barrier between women and management or highstatus positions (Cotter et al. 2001; Hultin 2003; Wright and Baxter 2000). Although the question of access to managerial positions is critical to understanding persistent gender inequality in the labor market, the increase in women’s managerial presence raises a broader question that is provocative and inherently sociological: What happens to the status of a subordinate group when some of its members attain positions from which they might reduce inequality? We use gender to gain insight into this question. Specifically, we ask whether the increase in women’s representation in management “lifts all boats” by reducing gender inequality among nonmanagerial workers or whether the benefits that accrue to female managers are limited only to those women. Clearly, the actions of managers affect those below them (Wright 1997). Yet, managers’ role in reproducing gender inequality is conspicuously understudied, despite its relevance for persistent labor market inequality (Hultin and Szulkin 1999; Hultin and Szulkin 2003) and for broadWorking for the Woman? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap