The Intersection of Organizational Inequalities

How Gender, Migrant Status, and Class Inequality Relate to Each Other
in French workplaces

Olivier Godechot (OSC, MaxPo) & Mirna Safi (OSC)

OSC Papers 2021/1 (May 2021, pdf, 1.6Mo, 28 p.)

In this working paper, we combine intersectional and organization theoretical insights and ask how different types of inequality are related within French workplaces. Our motivation is to clarify the meaning of workplaces as “inequality regimes” by asking if workplaces reinforce multiple inequalities or if there are tradeoffs between them.

Using French administrative data and novel techniques, we scrutinize correlations between class, gender and nativity wage gaps at the workplace level. We also study how each of these gaps relate to a fourth measure of wage inequality we call intra-categorical inequality (i.e within the three-level cross-categorization class × gender × nativity).

We discuss two sets of findings. First gender and nativity wage gaps are negatively correlated within workplaces. Second, while the gender gap is higher in more unequal workplaces, the nativity gap is higher in more equal workplaces. Finally, we also ask how industry, urban environment, and various workplace characteristics affect these patterns.

Our findings suggest that workplaces are not just sites of producing multidimensional inequality, but sites which specialize in inequality types.