Cultural Devaluation at the Job Level: Demand- and Supply-Side Evidence

Devaluation theory posits that occupations dominated by women are culturally undervalued, leading to lower pay. While prior research has focused primarily on the occupational level, this study asks whether cultural devaluation also operates at the job level and if such analysis can reveal the substantive content of feminine cultural meanings overlooked in occupation-based analyses. As devaluation rests on shared cultural beliefs, both demand and supply sides are analyzed. On the demand side, Study 1 applies word embedding–based text analysis to real-world Japanese job ads. On the supply side, Study 2 uses a factorial survey where participants evaluated fictitious job postings. The results suggest that both demand and supply sides share the belief that feminine meanings embedded in job ads—such as stereotypically feminine traits/skills and family-oriented WLB—do not deserve higher compensation. These findings extend the discussion of devaluation to the job level, capturing a fine-grained mechanism of cultural devaluation.