A Major Difference?: Fields of Study and Male—Female Pay Differences in Federal Employment

Men's greater tendency to study such high-paying fields as engineering, computer science, and business may account for half of the pay gap between male and female college graduates in the general economy, and women's mobility into traditionally male fields may explain the closing of the gender pay gap in recent decades. Do similar patterns hold for the federal civil service? Using 1% samples of college graduates in 1983, 1993, and 2003, we find that most of women's average pay rose from 72% to 89% of men's, largely because women's seniority levels rose and pay differences between seemingly comparable male and female college graduates fell. Women's concentration in lower paying fields of study explains another 3% or 4% of the pay disparity, but women's migration into fields traditionally dominated by men has not contributed much to the narrowing of the pay gap.