ABSTRACT
The overall sex gap in wages can be broken into an across-occupation and a within-occupation component. The sex gap related to across-occupation segregation has alternatively been attributed to human capital investment (Polachek, 1981), preferences (Daymont and Andrisani, 1984), and employment discrimination (Beller, 1982; Bergmann, 1974). The sex gap that remains within occupations may reflect pure pay discrimination between men and women working alongside one another. It may also reflect segregation across high-and low-wage firms (Blau, 1977; Groshen, 1991), or segregation across jobs within occupations and perhaps also within firms (Seiling, 1984). This “vertical” segregation may arise for any of the reasons used to explain segregation across occupations. In this chapter we investigate the role of discrimination in vertical segregation
among waiters and waitresses. There is a sizable sex gap in wages even in this narrow occupation. In the 1993 outgoing rotation group files of the Current Population Survey (CPS), the ratio of mean weekly earnings of waitresses to mean weekly earnings of waiters is 0.71, and the ratio of median weekly earnings is 0.75. Restricting attention to full-time workers, the corresponding ratios are 0.75 and 0.73. Finally, in a log weekly earnings regression estimated for full-time waitpersons, including the usual controls, the estimated coefficient of the dummy variable for waitresses is −0.18 (standard error 0.04).1 Alongwhat dimensionsmight vertical segregation amongwaiters andwaitresses
contribute to this earnings gap? Although there is no existing hard evidence on this point, researchers of sex differences in labormarkets have suggested that males are favored in high-price, formal restaurants, wherewages and tips are higher.2 In Pink Collar Workers Howe (1977) writes that in “the heart of Manhattan’s most expensive restaurant district, therewere only a relative handful of ‘tablecloth restaurants’ that hired women for anything but hat-checking. At the same time further uptown and downtown, farther west and east, throughout the other boroughs . . . the overwhelming majority of those serving food were women” (p. 104). Howe also cites the 1972-3 US Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook noting that “Jobs forwaiters tended to be concentrated in those restaurants, hotel dining rooms, private clubs, and other establishments where meal service was formal,” and she
claims that wages and tips are highest in precisely those jobs in which waiters are concentrated (p. 104). Similarly, Bergmann (1986) claims that friction between waitresses and other male employees in restaurants leads to the segregation of waiters into high-price restaurants, and waitresses into low-price restaurants. She writes that, “In American restaurants that offer fine food and/or a luxurious setting, the size of the check allows for tips big enough to attract male waiters. In cheaper restaurants, the owners put upwith the friction rather than supplement the tips to an extent necessary to be able to havemale waiters” (p. 99n). Furthermore, Bergmann claims that “Many of the restaurants that employ . . .male waiters have never hired a waitress” (p. 124), and if they do, they have “assigned them to different parts of the restaurant or different shifts, with the males getting the assignments in which the tips are higher” (p. 124n).3
