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In a perfectly free and open market economy, the type of employergovernment or privateshould have little or no impact on the earnings differentials between women and men. However, if there is discrimination against one sex, it is unlikely that the degree of discrimination by government and private employers will be the same. Differences in the degree of discrimination would result in earnings differentials associated with the type of employer. Given the nature of government and private employers, it seems most likely that discrimination by private employers would be greater. Thus, one would expect that, if women are being discriminated against, government employment would have a positive effect on womens earnings as compared with their earnings from private employment. The results of a study by Fuchs support this assumption. Fuchss results suggest that the earnings of women in an industry composed entirely of government employers would be 14. 6 percent greater than the earnings of women in an industry composed exclusively of private employees, other things being equal. In addition, both Fuchs and Sanborn have suggested that the effect of discrimination by consumers on the earnings of self-employed women may be greater than the effect of either government or private employer discrimination on the earnings of women employees. To test this hypothesis, Brown selected a large sample of White male and female workers from the 1970 Census and divided them into three categories: private employees, government employees, and self-employed. Browns research design controlled for education, labor-force participation, mobility, motivation, and age in order to eliminate these factors as explanations of the studys results. Browns results suggest that men and women are not treated the same by employers and consumers. For men, self-employment is the highest earnings category, with private employment next, and government lowest. For women, this order is reversed. | 
