Queer Economics

A Reader

Joyce Jacobsen, Adam Zeller, Joyce Jacobsen, Adam Zeller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135982539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

An important new book, bringing together into one volume many of the salient early articles in the field as well as important recent contributions, this reader is an examination of and response to the effects of heteronormativity on both economic outcomes and economics as a discipline.

The first book to consolidate what has been published, filling a gap in the currently available literature and edited by an expert in the field, it contains a brief introductory essay; setting-out the reasons for and aims of the project, and a short section introduction; defining the topic at hand and introducing each of the key readings.

This book is necessary reading for students in research areas including political economy, urban studies, economics, economic history and demographic economics.

SECTION SIX

Queer labor economics

THE CONVERGENCE OF INCREASED interest in the subject and increased data availability has led to a relatively large number of studies regarding the effects of sexual orientation on labor market outcomes. In particular, studies have delved into the effects of sexual orientation on individuals’ earnings. These studies provide an interesting extension to the large literature on gender differences in earnings, and the basic technique used (basically the statistical technique of multiple regression) is comparable, with the added twist of being able to divide the sample by both gender and sexual orientation.

A widely cited and influential early study in this area is Lee Badgett's “The wage effects of sexual orientation discrimination” (1995). Badgett uses 1989–91 data for the US from the nationally representative General Social Survey and finds that gay and bisexual men make significantly less than heterosexual men. This result is particularly noteworthy because other researchers who used nonrepresentative data had argued that gays made more than straight men (e.g., Hewitt 1995). Meanwhile, Badgett finds mixed evidence regarding whether or not lesbians make more than straight women.

Badgett's results for gays in the US have been corroborated by a number of later studies (Allegretto and Arthur 2001; Clain and Leppel 2001; Berg and Lien 2002; Black et al. 2003; Blandford 2003; Comolli 2004). Some studies have found a statistically significant difference between lesbian and heterosexual women, with lesbian women making more than heterosexuals (Clain and Leppel 2001; Berg and Lien 2002; Black et al. 2003; Blandford 2003; Jepsen 2007), while other studies find little or no difference once other earnings-related characteristics are controlled for (Klawitter 1997; Klawitter and Flatt 1998; Comolli 2004). However, the exact amount of the measured differential varies from study to study depending on the time period covered and the particular variables included. In addition, some recent studies are able to distinguish between gay and bisexual men on the one hand, and lesbian and bisexual women on the other, and thus measure differences in wage differentials related to bisexuality as opposed to either homosexuality or heterosexuality; Carpenter (2005) finds no effect of homosexuality on earnings, but some evidence that bisexuals earn less than heterosexuals – as does Preston (studied for women only) (2007).

More recently, a number of studies have become available that use data from other countries to study sexual orientation discrimination (Badgett and Frank 2007). For instance, in Erik Plug and Peter Berkhout's study, “Effects of sexual preferences on earnings in the Netherlands” (2004), they find a similar pattern to the US, but with less of an earnings differential for the men (gays make slightly less than straights, lesbians make slightly more than straights) and almost no earnings differential overall between gays and lesbians (in contrast to the US, where the gender differential favoring men continues to operate even when controlling for sexual orientation). Studies from Canada (Brown 1998) and the United Kingdom (Arabsheibani et al. 2004, 2005) find the same patterns as for the US and Netherlands for a general population sample, but no evidence of earnings differences in a sample of staff from six British universities, though there may be some capping at the high end for homosexual employees due to “glass ceilings” (Frank 2006).

The unique difficulty with studying homosexual job discrimination is that it can be unobservable in most environments. Race and gender are often highly salient and thus can be noticed almost instantaneously by employers. Sexual orientation is not highly visible, and in the labor market it is often assumed, unless indicated otherwise, that a potential employee is heterosexual. This poses a dilemma to the gay employee of whether or not to disclose his or her sexual preferences, or provide signals relating to sexual preference, to the employer.

Doris Weichselbaumer's study, “Sexual orientation discrimination in hiring” (2003), takes a novel approach to uncovering hiring discrimination in the Austrian labor market regarding perceived sexual orientation. Using the “auditing” technique, Weichselbaumer sends out pairs of resumes for women that differ only in terms of perceived sexual orientation (more masculine pictures, hobbies, and resume styling for the supposed lesbians). She finds a higher rate of being invited for a job interview for the women who appear to be heterosexual.

Other recent studies have used special data sets that allow us to observe the costs associated with disclosing one's homosexual identity at work. Comolli (2006) finds that those gay men who do disclose their orientation on the job earn 11 percent less on average than those who do not disclose; Hyman (1993) finds earnings for lesbians who are out to be lower than those of their co-workers. Preston (2007) gets a similar result for workers in “gay-unfriendly” workplaces, but no effect of disclosure for workers in “gay-friendly” workplaces.

Studies have also examined the differences in occupational choices between straight and gay workers (Hewitt 1995; Dunne 1996; Badgett and King 1997; Badgett 1998, 2001). One might expect differences not only for labor market demand-side reasons related to employer, employee, or customer discrimination based on sexual orientation, but also for supply-side reasons related to gender role nonconformity, attraction to particular occupations due to sexual orientation, and differences in same-sex household structures. Regarding sex role nonconformity, studies have examined its negative effects both on the probability of getting a job interview (Weichselbaumer 2004) and on other people's perception of one's desirability as a heterosexual partner if one is in an occupation that is considered as not typical for one's gender (Badgett and Folbre 2003). Indeed, it may be that the earnings premium that married men have traditionally enjoyed in the labor market is actually an anti-queer premium (Carpenter 2007; Frank 2007; Schmidt 2007). Several studies have thus also focused on differences in household division of labor in same-sex couples as compared to heterosexual couples (Klawitter 1995; Giddings 1998; Jepsen and Jepsen 2006), as well as the amount of labor supplied to the market (Tebaldi and Elmslie 2006).

Of course research need not be divorced from advocacy, and an increasing number of resources exist to inform both queer employees and job seekers of the current situation regarding workplace practices, queer-friendly employers, and various employment initiatives (Klawitter and Flatt 1998; Ragins 2004; Ayres and Brown 2005; Waaldijk and Bonini-Baraldi 2006; Human Rights Campaign), including discussions of whether or not to come out at work (Badgett 1996a, 1996b). In addition, resources now exist both to encourage employers to hire out workers (Candidatefive; Out and Equal) and to enable queer employees to network effectively with each other (Out for Business; Out Professionals; Reaching Out M BA). There is also an official labor organization, Pride At Work, for queer Americans (Hunt and Boris 2007).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 What is the evidence regarding the earnings effects of sexual orientation discrimination?

2 What confounding factors make the detection of discrimination due to sexuality or sexual orientation difficult and how can they be dealt with?

3 Why would choice of occupation vary systematically with one's sexual orientation?

4 Is sexual orientation confounded with sexual stereotyping? In other words, if a person is perceived as going against sexual type, is this damaging to their career regardless of their actual sexual orientation?

5 What factors lead to the decision as to whether to reveal or hide one's sexual orientation to an actual or potential employer?

REFERENCES

Allegretto, S. A. and Arthur, M. M. (2001) “An empirical analysis of homosexual/heterosexual male earnings differentials: unmarried and unequal?,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 54: 631–46.

Arabsheibani, G. R., Marin, A., and Wadsworth, J. (2004) “In the pink: homosexual-heterosexual wage differentials in the UK,” International Journal of Manpower, 25: 343–54.

—— (2005) “Gay pay in the UK,” Economica, 72: 333–47.

Ayres, I. and Brown, J. G. (2005) “Privatizing gay rights with non-discrimination...