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We examine the relational model of inequality using samples of employer-employee matched data from manufacturing plants in the United States and Japan. We argue that gender is a salient status characteristic in both the United States and Japan, but because of differences in gender politics, wage inequality will vary more across U.S. workplaces than Japanese workplaces. We find this claim to be supported, and then we model this variation as a function of exploitation and opportunity hoarding processes. Women's exclusion from high-wage plants and gender-linked claims-making resources help to explain between and within plant wage variation in U.S. workplaces. In Japan, where gender distinctions were less locally contested, access to lifetime employment and gender differences in labor supply generate local gender wage gaps. This paper provides evidence on the utility of relational inequality theory and an empirical strategy to observe the exploitation and opportunity hoarding mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract This paper joins central concerns in the sociology of work and the sociology of aging. Age differences in work commitment and work values are examined, as well as their work and nonwork determinants, using data from 4,567 American and 3,735 Japanese employees. Our results show that older men are more committed to work than younger men in both Japan and the United States. This pattern also holds for American women, but there are no age differences in work commitment among Japanese women. Moreover, there are greater age differences among the Japanese in the importance placed on good pay. This is consistent with the view that there has been greater cultural change in recent years in Japan than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relational model of inequality using samples of employer-employee matched data from manufacturing plants in the United States and Japan. We argue that gender is a salient status characteristic in both the United States and Japan, but because of differences in gender politics, wage inequality will vary more across U.S. workplaces than Japanese workplaces. We find this claim to be supported, and then we model this variation as a function of exploitation and opportunity hoarding processes. Women's exclusion from high-wage plants and gender-linked claims-making resources help to explain between and within plant wage variation in U.S. workplaces. In Japan, where gender distinctions were less locally contested, access to lifetime employment and gender differences in labor supply generate local gender wage gaps. This paper provides evidence on the utility of relational inequality theory and an empirical strategy to observe the exploitation and opportunity hoarding mechanisms.