LEADING THOUGHTS

Since 1995, researchers have been studying wage differentials based on sexual orientation. Studies based on U.S. census data, for example, have shown that lesbians earn more than heterosexual women; the “lesbian wage premium” is estimated to be between 8 and 13 percent.

A team of researchers from the University of Nevada also mined census data to investigate the effect a previous heterosexual marriage exerts on the relative wages of lesbians (defined as a woman sharing a household with a female partner) and heterosexual women.

“The fact that many lesbians were once involved in a heterosexual marriage provides an opportunity to better understand the relationship between lesbian wages and wages earned by otherwise similar heterosexual women,” write Daneshvary, Waddoups, and Wimmer  in the journal Industrial Relations. Never-married lesbians, the thinking goes, are not constrained by “traditional gender roles” and are better able to invest in developing themselves for the job market.

Crunching the 2000 census numbers, Daneshvary et al found that never-married lesbians earn significantly higher wages than heterosexual women, while previously married lesbians earn roughly the same wages as their heterosexual counterparts. “We find the largest gaps between never-married lesbians and previously married lesbians (8.7 percent) and between never-married lesbians and previously married heterosexuals (8.2 percent). The estimated gap between never-married lesbians and never-married heterosexuals is substantially lower (4.1 percent).”

The findings, say the researchers, are “consistent with the notion that at least part of the lesbian premium originates from lesbians’ relative freedom from constraints associated with marriage and the gender division of labor in traditional households.”

“Previous Marriage and the Lesbian Wage Premium,” by Nasser Daneshvary, C. Jeffrey Waddoups, and Bradley S. Wimmer; Industrial Relations (Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 432-453)

If you cannot find this journal is your local library, email me for a copy of the article at Alan [at] AlanMorantz [dot] com

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