Strategy and Diversity: Unpacking the Gender and Racial Gaps in Earning

Organizational scholars have long focused on earning inequalities across genders and races, yet large earning differences prevail in almost all occupations worldwide. While most research focuses on within-firm processes to explain this phenomenon, such as hiring and promotion, other processes play an important role, such as between-firm segregation and organizational characteristics. This symposium aims to unpack the racial and gender gaps in earnings in a wide range of occupations and organizations. We will focus on employees in both the public and private sectors, along with entrepreneurs. The first paper documents a decrease in the gender gap in the public sector in the US over the past twenty years. Yet, this gap persists, particularly at the very top percentiles of the wage distribution. The second paper examines the role of organizational characteristics on gender disparities in profitability. It shows that with the exact same business characteristics, the gender gap is reduced but persists. The thi...