Man Up, Man Down: Race-ethnicity and the Hierarchy of Men in Female-dominated Work

Scholars have largely overlooked the significance of race and socioeconomic status in determining which men traverse gender-boundaries into female-dominated, typically devalued, work. Examining the gender composition of the jobs that racial minority men occupy provides critical insights into mechanisms of broader racial disparities in the labor market – in addition to stalled occupational desegregation trends between men andwomen. Using nationally representative data from the three-year American Community Survey (2010–2012), we examine racial/ethnic and educational differences in which men occupy gender-typed jobs. We find that racial minority men are more likely than white men to occupy female-dominated jobs at all levels of education—except highly-educated Asian/Pacific Islander men—and that these patterns are more pronounced at lower levels of education. These findings have implications for broader occupationalinequality patterns among men as well as between men and women.