Gender wage gap across the wage distribution in different segments of the Indian labour market, 1983–2012: exploring the glass ceiling or sticky floor phenomenon

Women’s participation in the Indian labour market is not only low but they are also engaged in low-productivity and low-paying jobs. Further, the labour market is segmented by gender, type of employment, sector and location of residence. This study makes an important contribution by examining gender wage gap in India across different segments of the labour market over the wage distribution using national-level representative data spanning the period 1983 to 2012. The empirical results suggest that (i) the male–female raw wage gap has declined over time across the wage distribution, (ii) the gender wage gap attributable to differing returns to characteristics has increased over time and there is evidence of convergence of productive characteristics of men and women, (iii) sticky floor rather than glass ceiling phenomenon is observed in all segments of the labour market and (iv) the adjusted wage gap suggests that women at the bottom of the distribution face higher discrimination than those at the top and this has increased over the years.     

Why do women still earn less than men? Decomposing the Dutch gender pay gap, 1996–2006

Despite major improvements in women's labour market attachment, women still earn considerably less than men. International research shows that the persistence of the gender pay gap may be due to the fact that although the gap in characteristics between men and women is diminishing, changes in the wage structure counteract this change. This article will study whether this ‘swimming upstream’ phenomenon is also playing a role in the rather slow convergence between male and female wages in the Netherlands. Our results indicate that this is not the case; most of the changes in the Dutch wage structure have been rather favourable to women. The lacking convergence in wages has to be explained from the fact that despite the favourable changes, the Dutch wage structure still contains a considerable implicit gender bias.     

Changes in women's hours of market work: The role of returns to experience

Over the past several decades, married women's hours of market work increased significantly in the US. I argue that changes in behavior by married women with children account for much of this change. In particular, the pattern of married women's work hours has changed substantially over the life cycle. In the past, married women in childbearing age tended to specialize in childrearing and home production activities at the expense of engaging in market work. Now they do not curb the hours they work in the market.What factors contribute to this change in behavior? In this paper, I focus on relative changes in returns to experience as an explanation. I use PSID data for the 1970s and the 1990s to estimate the extent to which relative returns to experience have changed. I then use a life-cycle model with human capital accumulation and home production to quantitatively assess the consequences of this increase for married women's hours of work over the life cycle.The estimates of the human capital production function show that women's marginal returns to experience increased by 25% across decades, whereas men's increased by only 6%. I show that this relative change accounts for 96% of the observed variation in married women's hours of work. Moreover, according to the model, the increase in returns to experience accounts for roughly half of the increase in the female/male wage ratio that is found in the data. I also show that a decline in the gender wage gap, holding returns to experience constant, accounts for only 18% of the total increase in hours of work. As a consequence, it cannot explain the change in the shape of women's life-cycle profiles. Although the focus of the analysis is the labor supply behavior of women, the model also allows predictions about the behavior of men and single women. These predictions are consistent with the data.     

Undereducation and Overeducation in the Australian Labour Market*

This paper uses data from the 1996 Census of Population and Housing Household Sample File (HSF) to study the incidence of mismatch between workers' educational attainments and the requirements of their jobs, and the earnings consequences of this mismatch. It also examines whether mismatch contributes to the explanation of the gender wage differential in the Australian labour market. It is found that approximately 15.8 per cent of men and 13.6 per cent of women are overeducated, whereas approximately 18.5 per cent of women and 13.7 per cent of men are undereducated. Substantial earnings consequences are found to be associated with this mismatch, with surplus schooling yielding relatively low returns. The results suggest that mismatch does not account for the gender wage gap in the Australian labour market; rather the gender wage differential is entrenched in the fundamentals of pay determination.     

Effects of Marriage, Education and Occupation on the Female / Male Wage Gap in China

In the present study the way in which the gender wage gap in urban China differs according to marital status, education and occupation, is examined. Married Chinese women experience much larger absolute gender wage gaps than their unmarried counterparts. The proportion of the gender wage gap unexplained by differences in the levels of productive characteristics is also higher for married women than single women. Gender wage gaps are smaller for more educated women. These findings suggest that occupational segregation is not as important a factor as industrial segregation in accounting for the gender wage gap in China's urban labour markets.     

The Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia: A Closer Look at Gender Gaps in Employment,Earnings and Education

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, this article considers the longer-lasting economic impacts on the Australian workforce through a gender lens. Using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, it analyses changes in employment, earnings and educational participation relative to the pre-pandemic trends that were predicted to have otherwise occurred. Despite women's employment moving back towards pre-pandemic levels more rapidly than men's, the pandemic also saw a widening of the gender gap in earnings and a larger fall in women's educational participation. This paper highlights the need for ongoing monitoring of labour market indicators through a gender lens to inform more responsive policy design.     

The evolution of female labour force participation in urban China

Starting from the late 1980s, despite rapid economic growth, female labour force participation in urban China has shown a general declining trend. Using repeated cross‐sections from the Chinese Household Income Project Series (CHIP), this paper attempts to systematically relate the decrease in the labour force participation of married women to the socio‐economic changes happening in urban China during the same period of time. Adopting both linear and nonlinear decomposition techniques, the results indicate that the changes in married women's labour force participation during the periods 1995–2002 and 2007–2013 can be explained by the concurrent changes in the distribution of socio‐economic variables, while the changes during the periods 1988–1995 and 2002–2007 are mostly driven by the leftward shift of married women's participation function.     

Are children driving the gender wage gap?

We examine how much children and the responsibilities related to them contribute to the divergence of men's and women's wages, and consequently, to the formation of the gender wage gap. To derive the relative contribution of gender‐specific parent gaps to the overall gender wage gap, we provide a modification of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and include simultaneous corrections for selection into employment and parenthood. The results show that the fatherhood wage premium contributes most significantly to the gender wage gap, especially in Poland. The motherhood penalty is also significant, while the role of the gender gap among childless individuals is small.     

"Holding hands at midnight": The paradox of caring labor

Abstract

The gender wage gap in the United States narrowed considerably throughout the 1980s and then more slowly in the 1990s. Using a decomposition methodology and US Current Population Survey data, this study investigates the impact of deindustrialization's continuing shift in employment away from manufacturing to services on the US gender wage gap between 1990 and 2001. The study finds that the widening of the gender wage gap in the service sector caused a slowdown in the narrowing of the US gender wage gap. Within the service sector, two occupational elements affected the growing gender wage gap: women's entry into traditionally male occupations characterized by high wages and high gender wage differentials that resulted in the relative increase in men's wages compared to women's wages in these occupations.     

The Role of Gender among Low-Paid and High-Paid Workers

Using data from the 2001 Australian Census of Population and Housing Household Sample File, this article analyses the gender wage gap across the wage distribution by using a quan‐tile regression approach. The results show that there is a much larger gender wage gap among high‐paid workers than there is among low‐paid workers. Moreover, this wage gap tends to increase reasonably uniformly when one is moving up through the wage distribution. Institutional factors, the work environment and social norms are all areas that may require attention in order to redress the undervaluation of women's skills.     

The trend over time of the gender wage gap in Italy

We analyse gender wage gaps in Italy in the mid-1990s and in the mid-2000s. In this period, important labour market developments took place and they could have had a gender asymmetric impact on wages. We identify the time trends of different components of the gender wage gap across all the wage distribution. Although the unconditional gender wage gap remained roughly constant over time, we find that the component of the gap due to different rewards of similar characteristics deteriorated women’s relative wage. We show that especially women at the centre-top of the wage distribution swam against the tide: while the trend in female qualifications slightly reduced the gender wage gap, the gender-relative trends in the wage structure significantly increased it.     

A Reexamination of the Time Path of Wage Differentials in Taiwan

Contrary to the conclusions of a recent paper by Chen and Hsu (Review of Development Economics, vol. 5, 2001, pp. 336–54), wage inequality and returns to college‐educated workers have risen in Taiwan since 1980. Government policies which have caused rapid expansion of the supply of new college graduates have depressed returns for only the youngest cohorts of college graduates. Older cohorts of college graduates experienced rising returns, as have college graduates as a whole. Young college‐educated women's returns fell more and older college‐educated women's returns rose more relative to their male counterparts. Consequently, the rising share of women in the labor force helped amplify these trends. Changing trade patterns have tended to increase labor demand in sectors that use educated labor more intensively, helping to raise returns to skill. However, in contrast to western economies, rising capital intensity does not appear to have accelerated the pay gap by skill in Taiwan.     

Educational Attainment and the Gender Wage Gap: A Comparison of Young Men and Women in 1984 and 2007

This study pools data from two sources to investigate the role of educational attainment in determining the gender wage gap. The empirical analysis reveals that the returns to education remained largely unchanged for young men but declined significantly for young women over the period 1984–2007. We find significant evidence of a decline in the returns to a Bachelor's degree for young women as well as evidence of increasing wage inequality over time among young men and women with a Bachelor's degree. Also, in 2007, the gender wage gap between young men and women was largest for those with a Bachelor's degree. Further, our analysis suggests that young women with a college education may confront more discrimination in the labor market than young women without a college education. We conclude that promoting educational attainment among young women may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for addressing the gender wage gap.     

The gender wage gap among China’s rural–urban migrants

In this study, we present new empirical evidence on gender wage differences among rural–urban migrants in China. We use a data set that includes migrants residing in urban communities and those living at their workplaces—the latter were not included in the previous studies. We find that the gender wage gap among migrants is 16%–18% and does not differ between migrants living at workplaces and those living in urban communities. However, gender differences in industry sorting play a more important role for migrants living at their workplaces, whereas differences in education and experience are of importance for those living in urban communities. Overall, differences in the returns to characteristics are the main driver of the gender wage gap, especially for migrants living in urban communities.     

ECONOMIC TRANSITION AND THE GENDER EARNINGS GAP IN CHINESE INDUSTRY: THE ROLE OF FIRM CHARACTERISTICS

This paper analyzes the gender wage gap in the post‐reform Chinese industry using a unique employer‐employee matched dataset. The analysis shows that the sex‐related wage premiums at the firm level account for almost all the portion of the gender wage gap that is not explained by observed personal characteristics. It is found that firms which have a larger pay gap between men and women are more likely to operate in the market with fierce competition, subject to a hard budget constraint, adopt piece rates, and have a lower degree of employees' influence. (JEL I30, J16, J21, J64, J71, O10, R20)     

The gender gap in early-career wage growth

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This article explores the reason for this gender gap in early-career wage growth, considering three main hypotheses – human capital, job-shopping and 'psychological' theories. Human capital factors can explain about 11 log points, job-shopping about 1.5 log points and the psychological theories up to 4.5 log points depending on the specification. But a substantial unexplained gap remains: women who have continuous full-time employment, have had no children and express no desire to have them earn about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market.     

Explaining Eastern Germany's Wage Gap: The Impact of Structural Change

Since Eastern Germany's conversion to a market economy wages have remained considerably below the West German wage level. This article looks at the role of establishment-specific factors—such as sectoral affiliation and size of the labour force—in this process. A non-parametric decomposition that has played a prominent role in the gender wage gap literature is applied to breakdown the East–West wage gap into its constituent components. Using establishment data from German employment statistics, the article demonstrates that the catching-up process of Eastern Germany's wage level is hindered by the shift in its economic structure towards lower-paying types of companies, which has caused the lagging behind in the adjustment of wages.     

The Gender Wage Gap in Paid- and Self-Employment in Australia

This paper presents an analysis of the gender wage gap in the highly regulated Australian labour market. It compares wage outcomes in the wage and salary sector with those for the self-employed. Comparisons with the United States are provided. The large gender pay gap in self-employment suggests that the aggregate gender wage differential will not be eliminated solely through wage determination for wage and salary earners. The greater gender wage gap in the self-employed sector may reflect liquidity constraints that are more difficult for self-employed women to overcome relative to self-employed men. The comparisons with the United States suggest that women will experience deterioration in relative earnings as the Australian labour market is deregulated.     

The Gender Pension Gap in China

ABSTRACT

China has had a large gender gap in labor force participation, sectors of employment, and earnings. This study shows that disadvantages in the labor market for women are the primary drivers of the gender pension gap. Among people age 60 and older, women receive about half of the amount of men's social pensions. Using the 2013 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the CHARLS Life History Survey of 2014, this contribution has three main findings. First, about three-quarters of the deficit in women's pensions is explained by women's lower likelihood of receiving occupational pensions, and one-third is due to smaller benefits when they do receive them. Second, the gender deficit in receiving an occupational pension can be explained by education level and employment sector. Third, among pension recipients, nearly one-third of the gender benefit gap is explained by women's fewer years of employment and lower salaries.