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The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization just issued an intriguing report on “Exploring the Gender Pay Gap in Hawaii” about the significance of gender in earning disparities between men and women.

I am especially interested in on “The Gender Pay Gap by Ethnicity” that discusses salary differences between men and women among a dozen ethnic groups. The study confirms my argument that ethnicity is the dominant organizing principle in Hawaii, and it also shows that ethnicity intersects significantly with gender.

The data provided by the report’s author, Rachel Inafuku, a research economist with UHERO, is from the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau between 2015 and 2022.

Among its principal findings, the study found that full-time working women in Hawaii earn 86 cents for every dollar a comparable man makes. This amount is slightly higher than the 84 cents received by a fully employed woman nationally for every dollar earned by a man.

Other major findings include that women are disproportionately represented among low earners and are especially underrepresented among high earners. They constitute a majority of those making less than $20,000 a year, while representing only 29% of those in the highest earnings bracket — people making $160,000 or more.

Women make less than men in 74% of occupations. In the top five highest-paid occupations, women’s median earnings are less than for men in four of them, while women receive more than men in three of the five lowest-paid jobs.

At every educational level, men earn more than women, including at the doctoral and professional degree levels.

Lastly, Hawaii’s gender pay disparity is consistent with the argument of Nobel Prize laureate Claudia Goldin and her associates that the gap is primarily driven by motherhood. The study found that Hawaii mothers earn 74% of what fathers are paid, while childless women make 99% of the earnings of men without children.

The explanation is that women are more likely to work fewer hours to care for their families, which likely restricts their career advancement and earnings.

Compelling Theories About Pay Differences

The gender earnings gap differs widely among ethnic groups. This result isn’t very surprising since ethnic differences are evident in other measures of socioeconomic status, including education and occupation, as a consequence of ethnicity structuring inequality among Hawaii’s people.

Rather than race, the study focuses on ethnicity. If a similar report was produced in the continental U.S., it very likely would discuss the gender pay gap by race and use racial categories, such as Asian American, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Such broad racial categories obscure notable differences in the gender earning disparities among Asian American groups. The study found that Korean women have the second highest percentage of earnings — 95% — compared to men from their group.

In contrast, other Asian American groups have the lowest percentages of earnings in comparison to men in their respective communities. Japanese women earn 83% of what men do and Filipino women earn 85%.

How then does ethnicity account for the differences in the gender pay gap? Intersection theory introduced by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 provides a compelling approach to this question.

Initially concerned with the experiences of oppression among African American women as a result of the workings of both race and gender, Crenshaw argued that “Intersectionality is a metaphor [framework] for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality and disadvantage sometimes compound themselves.”

In continental America, as organizing principles, race and gender intersect with or reinforce one another primarily to the detriment of women of color. In Hawaii, ethnicity and gender also intersect but to the disadvantage of women from both dominant and subordinate ethnic groups.

Japanese women have the second lowest percentage of earnings in comparison to their male counterparts, which seems perplexing. How can that disadvantage be explained considering that Japanese are one of the socioeconomically dominant groups in Hawaii together with white and Chinese?

Japanese men and women both have the highest earnings in Hawaii, which can be attributed to them also having among the highest levels of educational attainment and occupational status. Their high socioeconomic status demonstrates how ethnicity operates to their significant benefit.

How then does the intersection of ethnicity and gender account for the substantial earnings disparity between Japanese men and women?

The UHERO study indicates that the five highest-earning occupations in Hawaii include at least three in which Japanese males are well represented — physicians and surgeons, other physicians and chief executives. The other two occupations are pharmacists and software developers.

While Japanese women are also well employed as other physicians and pharmacists, they are probably less represented as chief executives and surgeons. This and other gender-related occupational differences likely contribute to their gender pay gap, although the earnings of Japanese women are still relatively high.

As for Micronesians, who have the lowest percentage of women’s earnings compared to men at 81%, ethnicity works to restrict the employment of both males and females to low-paying occupations, especially in service work. In terms of intersection, Micronesian women are further disadvantaged by gender, which limits their access to better-paying jobs that men hold, such as security guards.

The case of Korean women, who have the second highest earnings in comparison to men at 95%, can be explained especially by ethnicity. They hold an intermediate socioeconomic status, meaning they are not one of the dominant groups but are also not on the lowest socioeconomic rung.

Both Korean men and women, especially immigrants, are well represented in two of the five lowest-paying occupations, including taxi drivers and chauffeurs, and tour and travel guides. They also are significantly employed as food service workers.

Thus, the intersection of ethnicity and gender works to the considerable disadvantage of both Korean immigrant men and women in channeling them to particular low-wage service jobs. However, ethnicity and gender are less restrictive for Hawaii-born Koreans, who are found to a greater extent in better-paying, white-collar occupations than immigrants are.

The higher salaries of such local Korean women possibly explain why Koreans have such a high percentage of earnings of women compared to men from their group.

The UHERO report provides an effective challenge to scholars like myself who argue for the dominance of ethnicity, race or class as the foremost principle of social relations in a given society but don’t pay sufficient attention to the other major organizing principle which, unlike the others, is universal — gender.