ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, women are paid nearly 750 to the dollar. Understanding why women are paid less than men gets at the heart of the economic basis of gender differences. Production constraint theory argues that men are paid more than women because men systematically lower women’s productivity. The overcrowding hypothesis is one of the oldest theories of gendered pay differentials. It was first put forward by Millicent Fawcett in 1918, and then restated in more neoclassical form by F. Y. Edgeworth in 1922. Human capital theory argues that women are paid less than men because their intermittent labor force participation reduces their supply of human capital. Comparable worth theory claims that women are paid less than men because employers systematically underestimate the value of women’s labor. When sociologists discuss wage differentials, they tend to omit the most important theory of all. In neoclassical economics, it is argued that wages equal marginal productivity.
