Women's Wage Theft Explaining Gender Differences in Violations of Wage and Hour Laws

Article
Work and Occupations

2016, Vol. 43(4) 371400
Womens Wage ! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0730888416661019
Gender Differences wox.sagepub.com
in Violations of Wage
and Hour Laws
Miruna Petrescu-Prahova1 and

Michael W. Spiller2
Abstract
In this study, the authors identify and analyze a distinct and understudied
source of gender inequality: gender differences in violations of wage-related
workplace laws. The authors find that women have significantly higher rates
of minimum wage and overtime violations than men and also lose more of
their earnings to wage theft than men. In the case of minimum wage viola-
tions, the authors also find that nativity and immigration status strongly
mediate this gender difference. Multivariate analysis suggests that demand-
side characteristicsoccupation and measures of nonstandard work and
informalityaccount for more of the gender difference in minimum wage
violations than do worker characteristics.
Keywords
gender wage gap, employment law, employment conditions, immigration
status, wage theft
1
University of Washington, WA, USA
2
Cornell University, NY, USA
Corresponding Author:
Miruna Petrescu-Prahova, Health Promotion Research Center, University of Washington,
1107 NE 45th Street, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Email: mirunapp@uw.edu
Downloaded from wox.sagepub.com at Universitas Gadjah Mada on November 4, 2016

372 Work and Occupations 43(4)
Gender earnings inequality in the United States has been well

documented over the past two decades (Blau & Kahn, 1997, 2000,
2003, 2007; England, Herbert, Kilbourne, Reid, & Megdal, 1994;
England, Kilbourne, Farkas, & Dou, 1988; Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993;
Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2006). However, fewer studies have examined
gender inequality in the context of broader structural changes in the
labor market or at dierent points of the earnings distribution (Leicht,
2008; Morris & Western, 1999). Changing demographics of the labor
force, the impact of economic restructuring, the role of political context
and institutions, and the dynamics of globalization all represented new
sources of inequality at the close of the 20th century, ones whose impact
on gender inequality has yet to be fully mapped (Bernhardt, Morris, &
Handcock, 1995; Morgan, 1998).
At the level of the workplace, a central driver of wage inequality is a
series of profound changes in the employment relationship that McCall
(2000) terms the deinstitutionalization of the labor market: a shift away
from internal labor markets featuring long-term employment, upward
mobility, and company-run training to an externalized labor market
dened by subcontracting and other forms of nonstandard work
(Bernhardt, Boushey, Dresser, & Tilly, 2008; Cappelli et al., 1997;
Kalleberg, 2011). This shift has been enabled by an erosion of both legal
and normative labor market standards and the emergence of what has been
called the gloves-o economy, characterized by the growth of employment
and labor law violations (Bernhardt et al., 2008; Osterman, 2000).
In this study, we identify and analyze a distinct and understudied
source of gender inequality at the bottom of the wage distribution:
gender dierences in violations of wage-related workplace laws. The
study has two main objectives: to examine gender dierences in min-
imum wage and overtime violations, and to examine the extent to which
demand-side and worker characteristics help explain such dierences.
Previous Research and Hypotheses

The Gender Wage Gap
A large literature addresses the processes that lead to gender dierences
in earnings in the United States (Blau & Kahn, 2007; Marini, 1989;
Stainback & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012; Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993),
with supply-side explanations focusing on the characteristics and deci-
sions of individual workers, and demand-side explanations focusing on
discrimination and characteristics of the workplace.

Petrescu-Prahova and Spiller 373
Human capital models attribute the gender gap in earnings to dier-

ences in decisions about education, on-the-job training, and eort. While
gender dierences in education have decreased in recent years, and have
even been reversed in some cases, work experience remains an important
qualication in explaining the gender pay gap. Although today the major-
ity of women with young children are in the labor force (Blau & Kahn,
2007), they have less job experience and are more likely than nonmothers
to work in part-time jobs, which eectively translates into a wage penalty
for motherhood (Budig & England, 2001).
Another important source of gender wage dierences in the labor
market is immigration status. Phillips and Massey (1999) examined
the signicant wage penalty that emerged for undocumented Mexican
workers relative to documented workers after passage of the 1986
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Their analysis suggests
that this penalty is at least in part the direct result of IRCAs employer
sanctions, with employers passing on the risks and costs now associated
with hiring undocumented workers in the form of lower wages. Donato,
Wakabayashi, Armenta, and Hakimzadeh (2008) further rened the
analysis by showing that Mexican immigrant women were dispropor-
tionately impacted by IRCA, documenting worse outcomes relative to
men on a number of dimensions, including wages and working in the
informal economy.
Supply-side theories help explain some, but not all, of the gender pay
gap; Leicht (2008) argues that they account for about half of the gap.
To provide additional explanatory power, researchers have focused on
demand-side mechanisms as well, particularly on discrimination, hiring,
and the structure of work (job and employer characteristics).
Petersen and Morgan (1995) identify three types of discrimination
that can produce wage dierences between men and women at the
occupational and establishment level. First, women are dierentially
allocated to occupations and establishments that pay lower wages, via
statistical discrimination and status closure (Phelps, 1972; Tomaskovic-
Devey, 1993). Second, the more an occupation is lled by women, the
more it is devalued and deskilled by employers, with consequences for
pay and other job quality outcomes (Petersen & Morgan, 1995). Third,
residual within-occupation discrimination occurs when women receive
lower wages than men within a given occupation.
Organizations with more formalized hiring and personnel practices
tend to have lower gender segregation and inequality (Stainback &
Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012). Kmec (2005) examines the mechanisms
through which organizational hiring practices and policies link workers

to sex-traditional jobs. Formal practices for recruitment, such as posting

of help-wanted signs, consideration of walk-in applicants, and using
formal screens, reduce sex-traditional employment. In addition, declines
in a positions skill requirements (deskilling) lead hiring agents to open
traditional male occupations to women. The reverse is not true for men,
suggesting that mechanisms for sex segregation based on hiring prac-
tices dier for men and women.
Another factor that is likely to inuence the labor market experience
of men and women is the emergence of nonstandard work, typically
dened as employment relationships that in various ways diverge
from permanent full-time status (Kalleberg, 2000). In recent years,
researchers have documented the growth of nonstandard work arrange-
ments, such as outsourcing and subcontracting (Kalleberg & Marsden,
2005), temp work (Gonos, 1997), contingent work (Barker &
Christensen, 1998), and other nonstandard forms of employment. At
the local labor market level, McCall (2000) nds that casualization
(dened as high percentages of part-time work, temporary work, and
unincorporated self-employment) exerts signicant positive eects on
gender wage inequality. Not only are women more likely to hold non-
standard jobs, but Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson (2000) nd that
women average more bad job characteristics than men in ve of the
seven nonstandard arrangements they analyze, and that the gender dif-
ference is substantially greater in nonstandard work than in regular full-
time jobs.
Gender and Violations of Employment and Labor Laws

Empirical evidence documenting workplace violations in the United
States is quite sparse, in part because it is dicult to measure. Prior
to the 2008 Unregulated Work Survey (UWS), the most accurate and
representative data on workplace violations came from a series of
employer compliance surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of
Labor in the late 1990s. These surveys identied high rates of minimum
wage and overtime violations in a number of industries and cities
but did not provide broader estimates for the entire labor market
(U.S. Department of Labor, 2001; Weil, 2005).
Subsequent research has similarly focused on particular industries,
such as the garment industry (Chin, 2005), the restaurant industry
(Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York and the New York
City Restaurant Industry Coalition, 2005), or the domestic worker
industry (Domestic Workers United and Data Center, 2006).

Other studies have focused on particular groups of workers, such as

immigrant workers (Mehta, Theodore, Mora, & Wade, 2002; Tienda
& Raijman, 2000) and day laborers (Theodore, Valenzuela, &
Melendez, 2006). While this body of research has tended to use ethno-
graphic methods or has relied on convenience samples, it strongly sug-
gests that gender plays an important role in unregulated work; women
are either concentrated in occupations that are especially vulnerable to
workplace violations (such as domestic work) or are at greater risk of
violations than their male counterparts in a given sector, such as the
restaurant industry (Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, 2012).
Hypotheses
To our knowledge, the 2008 UWS analyzed in this article is the rst
representative survey of workplace violations covering a broad swath of
industries and groups of workers. As such, it allows us to examine, for
the rst time, gender dierences in violations of employment and labor
laws across industries and occupations.
Our framework for analyzing gender dierences in minimum wage
violations is to treat those violations as one specic form of wage deter-
mination (since wage theft translates into decreased wages). We, there-
fore, expect that women will have higher rates of minimum wage
violations than men, and that, for a given violation, women will experi-
ence greater amounts of wage theft than men.
Similarly, we expect that the factors that explain the gender gap in
wages will prove helpful in explaining gender dierences in workplace
violations. On the basis of the literature, we hypothesize that worker
characteristics will play a signicant role, including education and
potential workforce experience, as well as marital status and number
of children. We also add immigration status and English-speaking abil-
ity because of our focus on low-wage workers and the ndings of
Donato et al. (2008). Previous analyses of the Unregulated Workers
Survey data show that gender, nativity, and race or ethnicity are
deeply intertwined (Bernhardt et al., 2009). Therefore, we expect a sig-
nicant interaction between immigration status and gender, with
undocumented women especially vulnerable to wage theft.
For predictions on the role of demand-side factors, we reach further
than the traditional gender gap literature. We do expect that gender
dierences in occupational employment will play an important role.
But based on Bernhardt, Spiller, and Theodore (2013), we also expect
that gender dierences in nonstandard work arrangements (such as

part-time or temporary status) and measures of employer informality

(such as small establishment size and cash pay) will correlate with higher
minimum wage violation rates among women.
Data and Methods

Prior to 2008, data were largely inadequate to assess the state of
employer compliance with U.S. workplace laws. Standard government
surveys do not gather the detailed data needed to measure workplace
violations. Original surveys of workers or employers are rare and con-
front signicant challenges in accurately sampling the populations of
interest and measuring violations of intricate legal standards.
To ll this data vacuum, a consortium of researchers designed and
conducted the 2008 UWS, a representative survey of 4,387 frontline
workers in low-wage industries and occupations in the three largest
U.S. cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. They adopted
two key methodological innovations to overcome the above sampling
and measurement challenges. First, they used a recently developed sam-
pling methodology, Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS), which
allowed them to reach the full range of workers in the low-wage labor
market, including unauthorized immigrants and o-the-books workers.
Second, they developed an extensive questionnaire that allowed them to
rigorously assess whether employment and labor laws were being vio-
lated without relying on workers own knowledge of these laws. In what
follows, we give a brief description of the UWS; see Spiller, Bernhardt,
Perelshteyn, and Heckathorn (2010) for full documentation of survey
design and methodology.
The Sampling Universe

To be included in the study, (a) workers had to be age 18 or older, and
currently working for an employer within the limits of Los Angeles
County, Cook County (Chicago), or the ve boroughs of New York
City; (b) they had to be a frontline worker, meaning not a manager,
professional or technical worker; and (c) they had to hold at least one
job in a low-wage industry or occupation in the previous workweek.
Managers and professional or technical workers were excluded because
many are exempt from the workplace laws examined in the study.
The focus on low-wage industries and occupations was driven by
resource constraints; sampling the entire labor market would have
been highly inecient and cost prohibitive.1 The sample is estimated

to represent about 1.64 million workers, which represents about 31% of

the frontline workforce, and 15% of the total workforce, of the three
cities combined. By selecting industries and occupations that comprise
approximately the bottom third of the frontline workforce, the study
struck a balance between scope and depth, a common tradeo in design-
ing labor market surveys.
Sampling Methodology
In light of the challenges of surveying hard-to-reach and vulnerable
workers with standard sampling approaches, the study adopted an
innovative sampling method that operates through respondents social
networks. All workers have friends, family, or coworkers whom they
trust and with whom they come into regular contact. The studys
approach relied on chain-referral sampling, in which survey
respondents recruited people they knew into the sample, and import-
antly, to whom they could communicate that the survey was safe and
would not trigger, for example, being reported to the immigration or
tax authorities.
The best-known sampling method using this form of recruitment is
snowball sampling, an approach that yields convenience samples that are
not representative of the target population. To overcome this limitation,
the study used a newer form of chain-referral sampling, RDS, that was
developed by Douglas Heckathorn (1997, 2007) and others (Gile &
Handcock, 2010; Salganik, 2006; Salganik & Heckathorn, 2004). RDS
is based on a mathematical model of the social networks that connect
survey respondents. The model is then used to adjust the sample esti-
mates to reect respondents diering probabilities of being captured by
the survey.
The UWS sampling began with a small set of population members to
be surveyed, which were identied through contacts in each city. These
seeds were then given a xed number of uniquely numbered coupons to
pass on to other workers, with detailed instructions about who was
eligible for the survey. These recruits then brought the coupons to
one of several survey sites (such as social service organizations, commu-
nity colleges, and churches), where the coupon number was recorded,
the respondent was surveyed, and the respondent was given a xed
number of coupons with which to recruit other workers. Among work-
ers who recruited, the workers in the sample recruited an average of two
other workers (respondents were compensated for completing the
survey and recruiting other workers). This process was repeated over

a period of about 6 months in each city in 2008, yielding the nal sample
of 4,387 workers, with an average of 7.5 waves of recruitment per city.
Estimation
RDS uses information collected during the sampling process to quantify
features of the social network connecting respondents and then uses
these features to make inferences about population composition
(Salganik & Heckathorn, 2004). The two primary pieces of information
are each respondents personal network size (as measured by a series of
questions in the survey) and the recruitment patterns that link respond-
ents to one another (recruitment patterns are tracked closely during the
survey elding itself). This information allows researchers to produce
estimates that adjust for each individuals probability of being recruited
into the sample and the nonrandom patterning of social networks (see
Heckathorn, 2007, for a detailed description of the RDS estimator used
for our analysis).
The study did not detect strong network clustering on critical dimen-
sions such as industry, occupation, employer, and most importantly, the
workplace violations themselves. However, our study did identify strong
network clustering within several racial or ethnic groups (the specic
groups diered by city). While the RDS estimator used in our analysis
adjusts for moderate amounts of nonrandom network clustering, the
clustering was strong enough to warrant additional poststratication,
drawing on external survey data. Specically, we poststratied the RDS-
adjusted estimates on race and nativity (the specic categories varied by
city) using 2007 American Community Survey (ACS) data, with adjust-
ments for undercounting of undocumented immigrants; see Spiller et al.
(2010) for a detailed description. As a result, the nal weight used in this
article consists of three components: an RDS weight based on features
of the social networks we sampled, a within-city ACS weight based on
the relative sizes of race or nativity groups, and a between-city ACS
weight that adjusts for the relative size of each citys population.
The Survey Instrument

The UWS is unique in that it measures a range of violations of employ-
ment and labor laws, using an original battery of detailed, in-depth
questions. Interviews typically lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, and
were conducted in 13 languages. The questionnaire did not rely on
workers having any direct knowledge about their legal rights, or

about whether they had experienced a workplace violation. Instead, the

strategy was to gather raw inputs from workersthe necessary data
about their hours, earnings and working conditions, as well as relevant
employer actions. These data were then used to determine whether a law
had been violated or not, based on programming of the complex matrix
of federal and state statutes that set legal standards for wages, hours,
meal and rest breaks, right to organize, workers compensation, and
other dimensions of the employment relationship.2
Sample Characteristics
The Appendix provides an overview of our sample, weighted to estimate
the population characteristics of frontline workers in low-wage indus-
tries and occupations in the three cities. Our sample consists of more
women than men; signicant numbers of people of color, especially
Latino workers; and a full range of age groups and education levels,
although about three quarters of the respondents obtained a high school
degree or less. Also consistent with recent trends in the low-wage labor
market, immigrants make up a disproportionate part of this sam-
plewe estimate that 30% were born in the United States, with the
remainder comprising foreign-born citizens as well as both documented
and undocumented residents. Given that we surveyed only low-wage
industries and occupations, it is not surprising that this workforce
earns very low wages, with an estimated median wage (in 2008 dollars)
of $8.15 an hour. Finally, many of the occupations in the sample are
service jobs, such as cashiers, cooks, child care workers, waiters, and
sales workers, although construction laborers, freight drivers, and fac-
tory workers are also well represented. In short, our sample represents a
rich and diverse mix of the industries and occupations that shape
Americas urban economies.
Gender Differences in Workplace Violations

We begin by estimating gender dierences in prevalence rates for min-
imum wage and overtime violations in the 2008 UWS. As measured in
this study, a minimum wage violation occurs when an employee is paid
below the federal or state statutory minimum wage, whichever is higher.
At the time of the UWS, the three states in our sample all had minimum
wage rates higher than the federal standard: $7.15 in New York, $7.50 in
Illinois, and $8.00 in California.3 An overtime violation occurs when an
employee works more than 40 hours in a given week but is paid less than

one-and-a-half times the regular rate of pay for the overtime hours. We
also include in this measure violations of daily overtime laws, which in
New York and California require some level of premium pay above a
certain number of hours worked per day (the exact requirements dier
by state).
Table 1 lists the two measures along with their overall and gender-
specic violation rates.4 In our sample, all respondents were at risk of a
minimum wage violation in the previous work week; of these, 26.8%
experienced the violation. Moreover, women had a signicantly higher
violation rate than men, at 31.3 compared with 20.4%or roughly 50%
higher. Gender dierences appear in overtime violations as well. For
this measure, the concept of risk set becomes important because only
workers who actually worked overtime hours can experience a violation.
In our sample, 36.6% of respondents were at risk of an overtime viola-
tion in the previous work week, meaning they had worked at least one
overtime hour. Of these workers, 77.0% experienced an overtime vio-
lation. Women had a signicantly higher overtime violation rate than
men, at 83.3% compared with 72.8%or about 14% higher. (Men were
somewhat more likely to be at risk of this violation than women.)
It is important to emphasize that these strong gender dierences are
layered on top of an overall high prevalence of violations in the UWS; in
other words, the gender dierence matters. The best way to measure
real-life impact is to examine the amount of wages lost due to wage-
related violations, or wage theft for short. Table 2 shows estimated
gender dierences in wage theft stemming from minimum wage and
overtime violations, in 2008 dollars. Women who had one or both of
Table 1. Gender Differences in Wage-Related Workplace Violations.
Gender
difference
Violation Overall Men Women (womenmen)
Percent with minimum 26.8 20.4 31.3 11.0***

wage violation last week
Percent with overtime 77.0 72.8 83.3 10.5*
violation last week
(of at-risk workers)
Source. Authors analysis of 2008 Unregulated Work Survey.
*p5.05. ***p5.001.

Table 2. Gender Differences in Weekly Wage Theft (2008 dollars)a.
Men Women
Average weekly wage theft from minimum wage $58 $79

and/or overtime violations
Average weekly pay (excluding wage theft) $353 $277
Average weekly wage theft, as percent of total 14% 22%
weekly pay due
Estimated average yearly wage theft, assuming $3,037 $4,120
FTFY work
Note. FTFY full-time, full-year.
a
All estimates calculated for workers who experienced a minimum wage or overtime violation
last week.
Source. Authors analysis of 2008 Unregulated Work Survey.
these violations lost on average of $79 per week, compared with $58 for
men. Further exacerbating this dierence, women also earned less per
week than men. The combined eect is that women lost a higher per-
centage of the wages due to them than did men (22% compared with
14%). In the context of earnings that already fall below the federal
poverty line, these wage theft rates constitute signicant losses over
the course of a year: Assuming full-time, full-year work, we estimate
that women lose an average of $4,120 and men an average of $3,037 to
minimum wage and overtime violations annually.
Explaining Gender Differences in

Minimum Wage Violations
We now turn to a model-based analysis of the correlates of the above
gender dierences, focusing on minimum wage violations given space
limitations.
We rst examine variation in the gender gap in violation rates by type
of worker. In particular, our review of the literature at the outset of the
article suggested that immigration status is likely to be a key dimension
to understanding gender inequalities in low-wage and informal work.
And in fact, as shown in Figure 1, nativity and immigration status play
a marked role in structuring minimum wage violations for men and
women. Gender dierences are only apparent among foreign-born
workers and are especially marked among those lacking authorization
to work in the United States. In short, nativity and immigration status

60%
Men Women 51%

50%
Perccent of workers with minimum wage violaon
40%
30%
30%
24%
20% 18% 18%

14%
10%
0%
U.S.-born Foreign-born documented Foreign-born undocumented
Figure 1. Minimum wage violation rates by gender, nativity, and immigration

status.
appear to substantially moderate gender dierences in minimum wage

violations. In the models that follow, we, therefore, estimate a complex
form of the gender eect; specically, we estimate the gender gap in
minimum wage violations among U.S.-born, documented, and undocu-
mented workers, separately.
Our modeling strategy is to regress the outcome variablewhether a
worker has had a minimum wage violation in the last weekon the
interaction of gender and legal status, and then to track the strength of
the gender-by-status coecients as we successively add other variables
into the model. Our bivariate analyses suggest that the men and women
in our sample dier on a number of demographic, job, and employer
characteristics (see Table A1 in the Appendix); the regression models
presented later allow us to ask whether and how those dierences help
to explain gender dierences in workplace violation rates.
Table 3 shows the results of four-nested logistic regression models,
with additional sets of variables added to the models as one moves
across the table. We weight the regressions to adjust for dierent city
sample sizes5 and include variables for recruiters outcome variable

Table 3. Logit Models on Experiencing a Minimum Wage Violation, Odds Ratios.
Variable Variable value Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Gender Status Male (U.S. born) 0.217*** 0.267*** 0.339*** 0.422***

Female (U.S. born) 0.280*** 0.347*** 0.350*** 0.499**
Male documented 0.231*** 0.305*** 0.368*** 0.402***
Female documented 0.358*** 0.503*** 0.493*** 0.664*
Male undocumented 0.429*** 0.434*** 0.666* 0.655*
Female undocumented
Education 5HS
HS/GED 0.731* 0.749* 0.776
Some college or more 0.725* 0.718* 0.798
Race Hispanic
African American 1.341 1.458* 1.676*
Asian or other race 0.714 0.756 0.735
White 0.447** 0.514* 0.512*
Cohabitation Not married or cohabitating

Married or cohabitating 0.825 0.798 0.829
Number of children No children

One child 1.044 1.043 0.991
2 children 1.084 1.084 1.083
383
(continued)
Table 3. (continued)
384
Potential experience 1.003 1.004 1.002
Job tenure 55 years

5 years 0.512*** 0.546*** 0.72
English ability Some English or more

No English 1.465** 1.421** 1.297
Know minimum wage Yes 0.729** 0.763* 0.928

No
Occupation Sewing and garment worker

Security guard 0.444* 0.750
Waiter, busser, and bartender 0.660 0.689
Building and grounds worker 0.408*** 0.519**
Maid and housekeeper 0.326*** 0.274***
Child care worker 2.172** 1.526
Home health-care worker 0.218*** 0.529
Cashier 0.648 1.138

Retail salesperson and teller 0.481** 0.547*
Stock or office clerk and courier 0.780 1.009
General construction 0.155*** 0.138***
(continued)
Factory and packaging worker 0.422*** 0.667

Car wash, parking lot and auto 0.462** 0.655
repair worker
Cook, dishwasher and food prep 0.400*** 0.624
Beauty, dry cleaning and general 1.623 1.222
repair worker
Full-time status Full-time
Part-time 0.769*
Short-term job Yes 1.097

No
Employer size 5100 employees

100 employees 0.663**
Employer benefits 1 Benefits

2 Benefits 0.418***
(continued)
385
386
Pay type Hourly

Non-hourly 3.767***
Constant 0.662*** 0.755 1.226 0.703
Log-likelihood 2162.034 2097.155 1975.953 1810.399

AIC 4346.067 4240.311 4025.907 3708.798
BIC 4415.471 4385.427 4259.356 3986.413
N 4,062 4,062 4,062 4,062
Pseudo-R2 0.084 0.111 0.163 0.233
Note. HS High School; HS/GED High School/General Education Diploma; AIC Akaike information criterion; BIC Bayesian information criterion.
Source. Authors analysis of the 2008 Unregulated Work Survey.
*p5.05. **p5.01. ***p50.001.

value and respondent personal network size to adjust the model for the
sampling design.6 The nal models t reasonably well, with highly sig-
nicant log-likelihoods, and reasonable levels of pseudo R-squared
values.
We begin in Model 1 by tting the gender-by-status interaction term
or eect. Reecting the patterns in Figure 1, undocumented women (the
contrast category) have signicantly higher odds of a minimum wage
violation than undocumented men, as well as all the other gender or
status groups. There is little gender dierence among U.S.-born workers
(who as a group have the lowest violation rates), but there is a signi-
cant gender gap among documented foreign-born workers.
In Model 2, we include a series of other worker characteristics.
As one might expect, education and race or ethnicity are both signi-
cant, with lower odds of a minimum wage violation for more educated
workers and White workers. Surprisingly, given previous research, we
do not nd signicant eects for marital status and number of children
in this model (although number of children is signicant without con-
trols). Potential experience (measured as age minus years of education
minus six) is also insignicant when controlling for other characteristics.
Three other worker characteristics are signicant, and results are in the
expected direction. Workers with 5 or more years of job tenure have
signicantly lower odds of a minimum wage violation, as do workers
who knew the current value of the statutory minimum wage, and work-
ers who had at least some English-speaking ability. These results suggest
that workers who have a long-term relationship with the employer,
know their rights, and speak English are better able to negotiate
wages with their employers.
In Model 3, we introduce 15 occupational categories, with sewing
and garment worker the contrast category. Not surprisingly (because
of the high rate of violations in this baseline occupation), the odds of a
minimum wage violation are often lower in the other occupations, but
to varying degrees. In fact, there is a fair amount of variation in min-
imum wage violations at the occupational level, even with demographic
controls already in place (analysis not shown).
In Model 4, we include variables that capture several dimensions of
nonstandard work and informality. One surprising result is that the
odds of a minimum wage violation are lower for part-time compared
with full-time workers; in-depth analysis (not shown) suggests that this
result is largely due to pay practices in this part of the labor market.
A large subset of respondents in our sample who had full-time jobs
worked many hours a week but were often paid xed weekly wages or

had other pay arrangement that did not take the hours worked into
account; the result is a lowered eective average hourly wage rate that
makes a minimum wage violation more likely for full-time workers.
The odds of a minimum wage violation are not signicantly higher
for workers in short-term or temporary jobs. The absence of a signi-
cant eect here may be due to the overall erosion of labor standards in
the low-wage industries studied here, which tends to atten out the
dierences we would have expected to see if the full labor market had
been sampled.
By contrast, three measures of employer informality are signicant
and work in the expected direction: employer size, whether the
employer paid the worker per hour or not, and a count of how many
benets the employer provided (health insurance, paid sick days and
vacation days, and annual raises). The odds of a minimum wage vio-
lation are signicantly higher for small employers, when the employer
did not pay by the hour, and when the employer oered one or fewer
benets.
Decomposing the Gender-by-Status Effects

We now return to our original question: What explains the gender
dierence in minimum wage violations, as mediated by nativity and
immigration status? We answer this question by scanning across
Models 1 to 4 in Table 3, in order to assess how the size and signicance
of the gender-by-status indicators change with the addition of successive
sets of covariates.
Going from Model 1 to Model 2 (where worker characteristics are
added), we see little change in the signicance of the indicators,
although there is some weakening of the size of several of the estimates,
indicating the presence of mild compositional eects. But the overall
impact of controlling for worker characteristics is minimal, which is not
surprising given that we are focusing on the low-wage labor market
only, where men and women are relatively similar in terms of attributes
such as education.
Going from Model 2 to Model 3 (where occupation is added), we see
a somewhat stronger attenuation in some of the gender dierences,
especially among undocumented workers, suggesting that the dierence
between undocumented men and women may be partly due to the fact
that they work in dierent occupations. For instance, as shown in Table
A2 in the Appendix, 24% of undocumented men work in general con-
struction, an occupation where there are no undocumented women.

On the other hand, 14% of undocumented women work as child care

workers, but no undocumented men fall into this occupational category.
Since child care workers have higher violation rates than construction
workers (analysis not shown), controlling for occupation reduces the
gender dierence among undocumented workers.
Bigger changes in the gender-by-status indicators occur when we
move from Model 3 to Model 4 (where we add other job and employer
characteristics). The dierence in minimum wage violation rates
between documented and undocumented women becomes strongly atte-
nuated, and in addition, the strength of several of the other estimates is
weakened. Further analysis shows that compositional dierences in the
informality of workers employers are playing an important role here.
Documented women are more likely than undocumented women to be
paid hourly and to have jobs that oer two or more benets, charac-
teristics which are associated with lower violation levels.
To summarize, our results suggest that job and employer character-
istics (including occupation) play a stronger role than worker charac-
teristics in explaining the estimated gender-by-status dierences in
minimum wage violations. To some extent, this nding may be a con-
sequence of our focus on workers in the low-wage labor market, where
we do not see big dierences between men and women on the worker
characteristic covariates. In Table 4, we conduct a more formal decom-
position, by estimating the marginal strength of the gender-by-status
indicators, in the presence of other covariates.
In the rst row, when the gender-by-status indicators are added and
no other variables are in the model, the gender-by-status chi-square
statistic is 209.29. This is the change in 2 log likelihood from the
constant-only model to the model with the gender-by-status variables
added, a measure of the improvement in t. In the second row, we add
the gender-by-status indicators after the worker characteristics variables
have already been introduced; the gender-by-status chi-square statistic
falls to 108.02, or a 48% drop in the direct gender-by-status eect.
In the third row, we add the gender-by-status indicators after the
occupation variable has already been introduced. In this case, the
gender-by-status chi-square statistic falls to 125.03, a smaller drop of
40% in the direct gender-by-status eect. In the fourth row, we add the
gender-by-status indicators after the job and employer variables have
already been introduced. In this case, the gender-by-status chi-square
statistic falls to 89.85, a bigger drop of 57% in the direct gender-by-
status eect. And in the nal row, we add the gender-by-status indica-
tors after worker, occupation, job, and employer variables are in the

Table 4. Gender-by-Status Effects in the Presence of Other Variables.
Chi-square value for Percentage reduction

Wald test on gender-by in gender-by-status
Model specification -status indicatorsa indicator chi-square
Gender-by-status indicators 209.29

Worker characteris- 108.02 48
tics gender-by-status
indicators
Occupation characteris- 125.03 40
indicators
Job/employer characteris- 89.85 57
indicators
Worker job/employer charac- 34.52 83
teristics gender-by-status
indicators
a
Chi-square test statistic for Wald test on gender-by-status indicators, once other variables
have been introduced. Source. Authors analysis of the 2008 Unregulated Work Survey.
model; here, the gender-by-status chi-square statistic falls to 34.52,

representing an 83% drop in the direct gender-by-status eect.
In sum, we have been able to account for a signicant portion of the
variation in violations across gender-by-status categories observed in
the UWS sample. Moreover, our decomposition suggests that dier-
ences in job and employer characteristics, including occupation, are a
much stronger source of gender-by-status variation than dierences in
worker characteristics. However, some of the variation remains unex-
plained, which is also the case in traditional gender wage gap studies.
This unexplained portion has usually been attributed to discrimination,
a factor that may also be driving the gender gap in violation rates
among low-wage workers.
Discussion
According to the National Womens Law Center (2013), women
working full time, year round jobs still make only 77 cents on the

dollar compared with their male counterparts. This wage gap has
been stagnant for the past 10 years, slowing the progress made
after the signing of the Equal Pay Act 50 years ago. A large body
of research has sought to identify the determinants of this gap, with
explanations focusing on both the supply side and the demand side of
the labor market. However, relatively little attention has been
devoted to how the wage gap plays at dierent points in the earnings
distribution.
The present study addresses this research gap by examining gender
wage inequality among low-wage workers, two thirds of whom are
women, disproportionately women of color (National Womens Law
Center, 2013). Our contribution to the literature is even more signi-
cant because we identify and analyze a largely unexamined dimension
of wage determination: violations of wage and hour employment
laws, which translate into lower earnings. We nd that women
have signicantly higher rates of minimum wage and overtime viola-
tions than men, and also lose more of their earnings to wage theft.
Moreover, we nd that some of these gender dierences are pat-
terned, to a substantial degree, by nativity and immigration status.
In fact, there is no signicant gender dierence in minimum wage
violations among U.S.-born workers; the gender gap is concentrated
among immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. These
results suggest that in the low-wage labor market, nativity and immi-
gration status are stronger sources of disadvantage than gender when
it comes to bargaining power over wages due under minimum wage
laws. Regression models suggest that the genesis of these gender/
status dierences lies with gender/status dierences in job and
employer characteristics, more than with dierences in education
and other worker characteristics.
Our ndings are generally in line with theoretical work on viola-
tions, which suggests that the stronger determinants of workplace
violations are on the demand side (Bernhardt et al., 2013). Our
results indicate that reorganization of work and production has
played out in very dierent ways across the wage distribution, and
specic restructuring strategies end up impacting women dierently
than men. This happens partly because of dierent occupational, job,
and employer characteristics, but also (in the case of minimum wage
violations) because of greater vulnerability due to the interaction
between gender and immigration-related disadvantage.

Conclusions
The broader context in which this gender-immigration status inter-
action operates has been characterized as a gloves-o economy
(Bernhardt et al., 2008). This term encompasses a set of employer
strategies and practices that either evade or downright violate the
core laws and standards that govern job quality in the US (p. 2).
Although such strategies have been present in certain sectors for a
long time, they are spreading as a result of competitive pressures and
deregulation. Examples of this race to the bottom are the decision
by some employers to reduce workers hours in order to avoid com-
pliance with the Aordable Care Acts provision that large companies
must provide aordable health insurance to employees working an
average of at least 30 hours per week (Pedicini, 2012), and wide-
spread noncompliance with Family and Medical Leave Act require-
ments (Armenia, Gerstel, & Wing, 2014). Reducing the incidence of
violations implies the need to enforce employment and labor laws
and reestablish standards in the workplace. However, federal enforce-
ment agencies are critically underfunded and understaed and rely on
workers to report instances of violations. Proactively identifying
industries where violations are systemic, conducting repeated, unan-
nounced inspections, and partnering with stakeholders such as
unions, community groups, and responsible employers may pro-
vide vital information about where violations are most common
and allow for more strategic interventions (Bernhardt, 2012). At the
same time, the role that immigration status plays in dierences in
violation rates suggests the need to separate the enforcement of
employment laws from immigration enforcement. The existence of a
rewall between immigration and employment inspections would pre-
vent more workers from feeling that reporting violations threatens
their employment.
Small steps in the direction of reestablishing workplace standards
and improving the lives of workers in low-wage industries are being
made at the local and state level in many parts of the United States:
Social movements focused on low-wage work (Bernhardt &
Osterman, 2016), and laws mandating paid sick leave or increasing
the minimum wage. However, long-lasting remedies will require a
more sustained eort at the federal level to adopt policies targeting
all sources of income inequality, including eliminating workplace dis-
crimination and reforming the immigration system.

Appendix
Table A1. Weighted Estimates of Population Characteristics.
Variable Variable value Overall (%) Male (%) Female (%)
Violations (poststratified by race)

Min. wage Yes 26.8 20.4 31.3
Demographics (poststratified by race)
Gender Male 44.4
Female 55.6
Education 5HS 50.1 47.4 52.0

HS/GED 28.2 28.6 28.0
Some college or more 21.7 24.0 20.0
Cohabitation Not married or 58.5 61.6 55.3

cohabiting
Married or cohabiting 41.5 38.4 44.7
Child count No children 52.5 59.7 47.5

One child 22.2 19.2 24.7
2 children 25.3 21.1 27.9
Job tenure 55 years 85.9 86.4 85.6

5years 14.1 13.6 14.4
Know wage Yes 46.0 45.4 46.2

No 54.0 54.6 53.8
FT/PT Full time 60.9 61.7 60.4

Part time 39.1 38.3 39.6
Short-term job No 78.5 70.3 84.5

Yes 21.5 29.7 15.5
Employer size 5100 employees 67.1 69.5 66.0

100 employees 32.9 30.5 34.0
Employer benefits 1 benefits 74.1 72.4 75.5

2 benefits 25.9 27.6 24.5
Pay type Hourly 64.1 67.0 62.7

Non-hourly 35.9 33.0 37.3
(continued)

Table A1. (continued)
Not poststratified by race

Status U.S. born 29.3 38.0 23.7
Foreign-born 31.1 21.5 38.5
documented
Foreign-born 39.5 40.5 37.8
undocumented
English ability Some English or more 73.7 78.8 69.9

No English 26.3 21.2 30.1
Race Hispanic 68.3 66.1 67.9

African American 14.8 19.7 12.5
Asian or other race 13.5 10.8 15.9
White 3.5 3.6 3.8
Occupation Security guard 2.2 3.3 1.4

Waiter, busser, and 4.8 4.5 5.1
bartender
Building and grounds 9.3 14.7 5.3
worker
Maid and housekeeper 6.8 0.9 11.1
Child care worker 6.6 0.4 11.1
Home health-care 5.0 0.9 8.0
worker
Cashier 5.5 2.0 8.0
Retail salesperson and 6.2 5.2 6.9
teller
Stock or office clerk 3.9 7.2 1.6
and courier
General construction 7.0 16.7 0.0
Sewing and garment 11.0 6.1 14.5
worker
Factory and packaging 12.0 10.2 13.2
worker
Car wash, parking lot, 3.8 8.3 0.6
and auto
repair worker
(continued)

Cook, dishwasher, and 12.5 17.1 9.2

food prep
Beauty, dry cleaning, 3.4 2.6 4.0
and general
repair worker
Note. HS High School; HS/GED High School/General Education Diploma; FT/PT full time/
part time.
Table A2. Weighted Estimates of Gender Differences by Immigration Status and

Occupation.
U.S. Born Documented FB Undocumented FB
Men Women Men Women Men Women

Occupation (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Security guard 9 8 3 0 1 0
Waiter, table busser, and 3 10 6 4 4 4
bartender
Building and grounds 22 4 14 6 11 5
worker
Maid and housekeeper 2 4 1 10 0 14
Child care worker 1 11 0 11 0 11
Home health-care worker 2 14 1 14 0 0
Cashier 4 15 3 11 0 4
Retail salesperson and 8 17 10 8 2 3
teller
Stock or office clerk and 12 6 9 1 4 1
courier
General construction 9 0 7 0 24 0
Sewing and garment 1 0 5 14 9 20
worker
Factory and packaging 3 1 11 8 13 22
worker
Car wash, parking lot, and 9 1 9 0 8 1
auto repair worker
(continued)

U.S. Born Documented FB Undocumented FB
Men Women Men Women Men Women

Occupation (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Cook, dishwasher, and 11 5 17 9 20 11

food preparer
Beauty, dry cleaning, and 2 4 5 4 2 4
general repair worker
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Note. FB foreign born.
Acknowledgments
The author(s) would like to thank Annette Bernhardt for her contribution to
this article, and Mark Handcock and Philip N. Cohen for their comments on
earlier versions of the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with respect to the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following nancial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the
Oce of Naval Research (ONR grant N00014-08-1-1015;to M. P.-P.) and the
Russell Sage Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the John Randolph Haynes and
Dora Haynes Foundation; and the Joyce Foundation (to M. W. S.).
Notes
1. A low-wage industry was defined as an industry whose median wage for
frontline workers was less than 85% of the citys median wage
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1994).
Census 2000 data were used to generate a list of industries and occupations
in each city that fell below 85% of the citys median hourly wage.
2. In calculating the various violation measures, the researchers were careful
not to double-count. For example, if a respondent worked five overtime
hours but was not paid for those hours, they recorded an overtime viola-
tion; once these 5 hours were tagged as unpaid, they did not contribute to
any other violation (e.g., they could not also trigger a minimum wage
violation).

3. In Illinois and New York, tipped workers are covered by a separate, lower
minimum wage; we include tipped minimum wage violations in this overall
measure.
4. See Spiller et al. (2010) for the state and federal statutes and exemptions that
were used in constructing these measures.
5. This article analyzes the pooled sample across the three cities; for an analysis
of city differences in violation rates and their correlates, see Milkman,
Gonzalez, and Ikeler (2011).
6. Since the survey used Respondent Driven Sampling, the data do not meet the
standard regression requirement that sample members be independent of one
another. To adjust for the sampling method, we include respondents recruiters
value for the outcome variable. The recruiters value serves to adjust for any
correlation between the recruiters and recruits value on the outcome variable.
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Author Biographies
Miruna Petrescu-Prahova is an assistant professor in the Department of
Health Services, University of Washington. Her most recent work
focuses on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based
programs for healthy aging, and evaluation of public health networks.
Her research has appeared in Social Networks, The Gerontologist, and
Preventing Chronic Disease.
Michael W. Spiller is affiliated with the Department of Sociology at

Cornell University. His research interests include sampling method-
ology, statistics, health, and social inequality. His work has appeared
in Social Forces, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, and Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

Women's Wage Theft Explaining Gender Differences in Violations of Wage and Hour Laws

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Work and Occupations

Miruna Petrescu-Prahova1 and

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Gender earnings inequality in the United States has been well

Previous Research and Hypotheses

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Human capital models attribute the gender gap in earnings to dier-

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to sex-traditional jobs. Formal practices for recruitment, such as posting

Gender and Violations of Employment and Labor Laws

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Other studies have focused on particular groups of workers, such as

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part-time or temporary status) and measures of employer informality

Data and Methods

The Sampling Universe

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to represent about 1.64 million workers, which represents about 31% of

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The Survey Instrument

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about whether they had experienced a workplace violation. Instead, the

Gender Differences in Workplace Violations

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Table 1. Gender Differences in Wage-Related Workplace Violations.

Percent with minimum 26.8 20.4 31.3 11.0***

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Table 2. Gender Differences in Weekly Wage Theft (2008 dollars)a.

Average weekly wage theft from minimum wage $58 $79

Explaining Gender Differences in

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Men Women 51%

20% 18% 18%

Figure 1. Minimum wage violation rates by gender, nativity, and immigration

appear to substantially moderate gender dierences in minimum wage

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Variable Variable value Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Gender Status Male (U.S. born) 0.217*** 0.267*** 0.339*** 0.422***

Cohabitation Not married or cohabitating

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Number of children No children

Potential experience 1.003 1.004 1.002

Job tenure 55 years

English ability Some English or more

Know minimum wage Yes 0.729** 0.763* 0.928

Occupation Sewing and garment worker

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Variable Variable value Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Factory and packaging worker 0.422*** 0.667

Short-term job Yes 1.097

Employer size 5100 employees

Employer benefits 1 Benefits

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Variable Variable value Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Pay type Hourly

Constant 0.662*** 0.755 1.226 0.703

Log-likelihood 2162.034 2097.155 1975.953 1810.399

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Decomposing the Gender-by-Status Effects

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Gender Status Male (U.S. born) 0.217* 0.267* 0.339* 0.422*

Log-likelihood 2162.034 2097.155 1975.953 1810.399