Doctoral Dissertation Research: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Wage Gaps and the Social Valuation Process

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Judith Stacey Ashley Mears New York University Fashion modeling is one of a handful of occupations in which women routinely earn more than their male counterparts, commanding wage premiums between 25 to 75 percent. Models sell their social capital, what is called their "look," on the market to fashion clients, as brokered by agents. The term "look" seemingly refers to a fixed set of physical attributes, but in fact looks are the flexible outcomes of social processes, in which agents and models jointly attempt to develop and package the kinds of appearances and personalities they predict will be desired by clients. A two-step question guides this research. First, how does a model's look attain value? More specifically, how do bookers and clients determine models' fees in the absence of formal guidelines and clear market value? Second, what is it about this value-production system that inverts the pervasive gender pay gap? If modeling is "women's work" and the co-PI argues that it is quintessentially so "why do male models not collect on their masculine advantage as tokens as they systematically do in other female-dominated jobs? To answer these questions, the co-PI will study how value is produced in the modeling markets of New York and London, two comparable fashion capitals, collecting data with participant observation and 100 interviews with models, agents, and clients. Broader Impacts Building upon feminist economics and the "new economic sociology," the research challenges mainstream economic theory by demonstrating how wages are part of social processes, and how value is a social product. In so doing, this project makes an original intellectual contribution by exploring a contradictory system of value production that rewards women. The study seeks to bridge economic studies and gender theory by showing how value is both a social and a gendered outcome. Fashion modeling is prototypical of emerging work forms in today's growing cultural economy. By tracing the production of value in fashion modeling, this project shows how expectations of gender structure the economic realm, paradoxically at the expense of men. With an aim to understanding the social origins of value, this study will enrich our ability to comprehend and tackle gender wage inequality that affects both women and men.