In The Cost of Being a Girl, Besen-Cassino, looks at how part-time employment in the teenage years affects the income of teenage girls vs boys. The biggest takeaway is similar to what I’ve read in the past about wages for women, they make less, are asked to do more emotional labour, and get penalized if they’re assertive like their male counterparts.
Teenage girls make less than boys by the 14-15 age group, not because the boys have more work experience, but because girls more often stay in freelance work like babysitting where the weak ties (babysitting for someone you have some relationship with in some fashion) where there is no formal path to a raise, and any request for a raise comes with it the implication that you don’t care enough about the kids and it’s “just a job”. Male babysitters don’t face the same pressures, from little expectation of household chores, to no extra emotional labour off the clock.
Besen-Cassino concludes that this early work experience teaches how to “do gender” and thus sets women up for depressed wages, and extra emotional labour for life. One bright side, is that teenage women what engage in waged labour (vs freelance work) are less likely to want to have anything to do with gender role stereotypes, unfortunately teenage men are more likely to want to have a “traditional” gendered relationship with their future partner.