Women in the One Percent: Gender Dynamics in Top Income Positions

Abstract

A growing body of research documents the importance of studying households in the top one percent of U.S. income distribution because they control enormous resources. However, little is known about whose income-men's or women's-is primarily responsible for pushing households into the one percent and whether women have individual pathways to earning one percent status based on their income. Using the 1995 to 2016 Surveys of Consumer Finances, we analyze gender income patterns in the one percent. Results show that women's income is sufficient for one percent status in only 1 in 20 of all elite households. Although self-employment and higher education increase the likelihood that women will personally earn sufficient income for one percent status, marrying a man with good income prospects is a woman's main route to the one percent. In contrast, men's one percent status is most closely associated with their own characteristics (self-employment and higher education). Importantly, the gender gap in personally earning one percent income has not narrowed since the mid-to late-1990s, indicating another area in which gender progress has stalled. This research suggests that men retain most of the primary breadwinning positions in top income households and that a financial glass ceiling remains firmly intact at the one percent level.

Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and the Impact of Workplace Power

“…I do not close off the possibility that holding a supervisory position may generate greater vulnerability. It remains unclear, however, as to whether it is women's positionality as supervisors or their more general location in numerically male-dominated establishments and/or in normatively male occupational fields (e.g., police officer, construction worker) that drive such patterns (see Yavorsky 2019). It is also the case that higher status women have the resources, knowledge, and efficacy to report at higher rates than lower status women and/or that the experience of sexual harassment may be a more salient dimension of injustice for higher status, educated women who are climbing mobility ladders.…”

One step forward? Advances and setbacks on the path toward gender equality in families and work

“…A study by Desai, Chugh, and Brief (2014) similarly finds that heterosexual men in marriages with a gender-traditional division of labor are less favorable toward the advancement of women in the workplace. Top positions in organizations are likely dominated by men like these, given that such positions remain particularly inhospitable to workers with caregiving responsibilities, and men retain a significant economic advantage in high-earning, elite families (Yavorsky, Keister, Qian, & Nau, 2019). Thus, the traditional family structure of top male leaders, which is out of step with the average worker, is likely an important force slowing organizations' adoption of supportive work-family policies and norms.…”

What Accounts for the Rising Share of Women in the Top 1%?

“…There is no comparable evidence for the USA that we are aware of but there is related research indicating that women s incomes have become more important at the top of the income distribution there as well. Yavorsky et al (2019) consider the top 1% of the US gross pre-tax household income distribution (rather than the individual income distribution as in the studies cited above for countries with independent taxation). They show tha , in 1995, he frac ion of omen hose income as s fficien o p heir ho sehold s income in the top 1% was 1.7% but the corresponding figure was 4.5% by 2016 (2019: Figure 2).…”