Explanations for the persistent pay disparity between similarly qualified men and women vary between women’s different and devalued work characteristics and specific processes that result in unequal wage returns to the same characteristics. This article investigates how the gender wage gap is affected by gender differences in detailed work activities among full-time, year-round, college-graduate workers in the US using decomposition analysis in the National Survey of College Graduates. Differences in men’s and women’s characteristics account for a majority of the gender wage gap. Additionally, men and women receive different returns to several characteristics: occupational composition, marriage and work activities. While men are penalized more than women for having teaching as their primary work activity, women receive lower rewards for primary work activities such as finance and computer programming. The findings suggest that even with men and women becoming more similar on several characteristics, unequal returns to those characteristics will stall progress towards equality.

中文翻译：

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特征或回报：了解美国大学毕业生的性别薪酬不平等

对于同样资质的男性和女性之间持续存在的薪酬差距的解释各不相同，因为女性的不同且被贬低的工作特征以及导致相同特征的工资回报不平等的具体过程。本文利用全国大学毕业生调查中的分解分析，调查了美国全职、全年大学毕业生的详细工作活动中的性别差异如何影响性别工资差距。男女特征的差异是性别工资差距的主要原因。此外，男性和女性在职业构成、婚姻和工作活动等几个特征上获得不同的回报。虽然男性因将教学作为主要工作活动而受到的惩罚比女性更多，但女性在金融和计算机编程等主要工作活动中获得的奖励较低。研究结果表明，即使男性和女性在某些特征上变得更加相似，这些特征的不平等回报也会阻碍平等的进展。