The Role of the Gender Wage Gap in Overall Wage Inequality: A Quantitative Exercise

Despite the evidence of female progress with regard to women’s role in the labor market, gender inequality remains. Women are still less likely to be employed than men, occupational gender segregation continues, and females continue to earn less than males. The gender wage gap remains wide in several occupational sectors, among which is the information technology (IT) sector. This paper focuses the determinants of gender wage inequality. More precisely, it investigates for statistical evidence of a glass ceiling effect on women’s wages. Based on the quantile regression framework, the empirical analysis extends the decomposition of the average gender wage gap to other parts of the earnings distribution. The main objective is to empirically test whether gender-based wage discrimination is greater among high paid employees, in line with glass ceiling hypothesis. Larger unexplained gaps at the top of the wage distribution indicate the existence of a glass ceiling effect in Portugal.

Download Full-text

Gender Wage Gap and the Involvement of Partners in Household Work

Work Employment and Society ◽

10.1177/0950017020937936 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 095001702093793

Author(s):

Eleonora Matteazzi ◽

Stefani Scherer

Keyword(s):

Gender Wage Gap ◽

Wage Gap ◽

Domestic Work ◽

Unpaid Work ◽

Market Work ◽

Household Work ◽

Domestic Activities ◽

The Us ◽

Gender Discrepancies

Women still earn less than men and continue to perform the bulk of domestic activities. Several studies documented a negative individual wage–housework relation, suggesting that gender discrepancies in housework may explain the gender wage gap. Less attention has been paid to the role of the partner’s unpaid work and to the extent that intra-household inequalities relate to inequalities outside the house. The present study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. We exploit EU-SILC 2010 data for Germany and Italy and PSID 2009 data for the US. Results suggest the importance of accounting for a partner’s housework when evaluating the determinants of individual wages and the gender wage gap. Women seem not to profit from their partners’ housework; instead, women’s non-market work increases their partners’ earnings while decreasing their own earnings. This suggests the importance of reducing women’s involvement in domestic work in order to close gender wage equalities.

Download Full-text

Rising Wage Inequality, the Decline of Collective Bargaining, and the Gender Wage Gap

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.1589535 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Dirk Antonczyk ◽

Bernd Fitzenberger ◽

Katrin Sommerfeld

Keyword(s):

Collective Bargaining ◽

Wage Inequality ◽

Gender Wage Gap ◽

Wage Gap

Download Full-text

Convergence in the gender wage gap in Australia over the 1980s: identifying the role of counteracting forces via the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce Decomposition

Applied Economics ◽

10.1080/00036840121991 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 33 (7) ◽

pp. 929-936 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Michael P. Kidd ◽

Michael Shannon

Keyword(s):

Gender Wage Gap ◽

Wage Gap

Download Full-text

Gender wage gap and the role of skills and tasks: evidence from the Austrian PIAAC data set

Applied Economics ◽

10.1080/00036846.2019.1630707 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 52 (2) ◽

pp. 113-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

M. Christl ◽

Monika Köppl–Turyna

Keyword(s):

Gender Wage Gap ◽

Wage Gap ◽

Data Set

Download Full-text

Is there less gender inequality in the service sector? The gender wage-gap in knowledge-intensive services

Social Science Information ◽

10.1177/0539018415586216 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 54 (3) ◽

pp. 369-393 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Diego Dueñas-Fernández ◽

Carlos Iglesias-Fernández ◽

Raquel Llorente-Heras

Keyword(s):

Information And Communication Technologies ◽

Gender Inequality ◽

Wage Inequality ◽

Service Sector ◽

Gender Wage Gap ◽

Wage Gap ◽

Communication Technologies ◽

Information And Communication ◽

Knowledge Intensive ◽

The One

The expansion of services and the dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are identified as important factors for improving employment opportunities for women, reducing labour differences by gender. The objective of the study is to determine to what extent services, and especially those most closely linked with knowledge and ICTs such as knowledge-intensive services (KIS), are changing some of the basics of labour gender differences. To do this, first we measure and characterize employment related to the service sector and KIS, comparing the existing gender wage-gap in these activities with the one observed in the overall economy. Then we carry out an analysis of decomposition over these gaps (in term of total distribution of wages and by quantiles). Our results indicate that, although KIS improve the wage situation of women, they are unable substantially to reduce gender wage inequality in the Spanish labour market, perhaps because the same gendered structures of the workplace are replicated in the KIS activities.

Download Full-text