The role of gender in the global economy is not represented particularly well by old-school "pipeline" theories of women entering particular industries, whether it is manufacturing, medicine, or college teaching. The pipeline analogy suggests that if women enter a field in equal or greater numbers to men, they will somehow automatically be "piped" into equal or greater positions of power, influence, and compensation. The truth is a little different. Under political arrangements featuring a rhetoric of equality, women may flood into previously male-dominated fields of endeavor, but when they do, there is no magical inevitability to improved circumstances. Gendered workplace segmentation is by no means limited to modestly educated Chinese manufacturing labor. American college campuses exhibit a markedly gendered distribution of power, prestige, and pay closely related to the feminization of certain disciplines, the assignment of women to contingent positions, and the feminization of both teaching and noncompensated service. This perspective complicates the narrative of women's reversal of the campus gender gap that has unfolded since the 1980s, when women started earning more bachelor's degrees. In higher education, women have become better represented, but they are still treated and compensated inequitably. The narrative of women's success via higher education rests on a house of cards. The author stresses that there are more women in business administration, but they are far more common in the dead-end administrative and supervisory ranks of lower management. Rather than a higher-education-fueled income advantage, women--particularly women with children--typically experience a significantly lower return on their higher-ed investment than men.