WOMEN AND MEN IN FILM - GENDER INEQUALITY AMONG WRITERS IN A CULTURE INDUSTRY

Distinctive features of culture industries suggest that women culture workers face formidable barriers to career advancement. Using longitud inal data on the careers of screenwriters, we examine gender inequalit y in the labor market for writers of feature films. We hypothesize and test three different models of labor market dynamics and find support for a model of cumulative disadvantage whereby the gender gap in earn ings grows ar men and women move through their careers. We suggest tha t the transition of screen writing from a mired to a male-dominated oc cupation parallels the ''empty field'' phenomenon described in a study by Tuchman of nineteenth-century novelists. The institutionalization of male dominance of the film industry in the 1930s and the typecastin g of women writers has had a lasting impact on gender inequality, whic h shows little change through the early 1990s.