Wage determination and the gender pay gap: A feminist political economy analysis and decomposition

Abstract

This paper develops a heterodox analytical framework of wage determination and a new method of decomposition of the gender pay gap drawing on Marxian and feminist theories. The proposed framework utilizes two wage equations for the analysis of the gender gap: the first equation refers to average occupational wages and the second to individual wages as deviations from occupational wages. Using a data set for wages from industries in Greece, this paper demonstrates and explains differences in results between this proposed decomposition of the gender pay gap and that of Oaxaca-Blinder, and discusses the merits of this new technique compared to the Brown-Moon-Zoloth method. The authors argue that the main advantage of this proposed method of decomposition over the other two methods is that the proposed method allows for separate estimates of the impact of social and individual gender wage discrimination on the gender pay gap.     

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.     

Gender pay differentials during the transition in Poland*

This paper assesses the relative economic welfare of women during the transition in Poland. After providing an account of gender differences in several labour market outcomes we analyse the male‐female wage differential over the period 1993–97. We find that there is almost no change in the wage gap, that most of the explained portion of the wage gap may be attributed to industrial and occupational segregation, and that a substantial portion of the wage gap remains unexplained. We briefly discuss possible socio‐economic explanations for our findings.     

Segregation and gender wage gaps in the private and the public sectors: an analysis of Danish linked employer–employee data, 2002–2012

This paper examines the relation between segregation and the gender wage gap in the public and the private sectors in Denmark from 2002 to 2012. The analysis shows that male–female differences in the share of females in occupations, industries, establishments and job cells (occupations within establishments) constitute 46 % of the raw gender wage gap in the private sector, while segregation in the public sector accounts for as much as 63 %. Segregation thus plays a substantially more important role in accounting for the gender wage gap in the public sector than in the private sector. While the importance of segregation for wage formation decreased substantially in the public sector over time, it only decreased slightly in the private sector. Although the remaining gender wage gap, after controlling for segregation, is close to zero in the public sector, a substantial within-job cell differential remains after controlling for segregation in the private sector.     

Gender segregation and earnings differences in the Spanish labour market

This article analyses the effects of different types of gender segregation on the gender wage differential for the Spanish labour market. Matched employer–employee data from a sample of 226,535 workers are used. These workers are employed in 61 occupations within 26,492 establishments in 51 different industries. Workers belonging to the same industry, establishment or job share common factors which cannot be observed and these factors affect wages. If these unobservable variables are correlated with the explanatory variables, their estimated effects will be biased. For this reason, we estimate the effects of each type of gender segregation on the wage gap using a robust specification to these possible correlations. We obtain that industrial segregation by gender explains a lower part of the wage gap between men and women than previous researches found using standard regressions, while the contributions of establishment segregation and occupational segregation within each establishment are greater.     

Public Sector Employment,Wage Inequality and the Gender Pay Ratio in the UK

This paper assesses the relative contributions of the different systems of pay determination in the private sector and the public sector toward the changing level of wage inequality and the gender pay ratio in the UK. The greater centralisation of pay arrangements in the public sector compared with the private sector in the UK suggests that public sector employment may have acted to offset the widening wage inequality seen in recent years, as well as making an important contribution to the increase in women's relative average earnings compared to men. This issue is addressed by drawing on unpublished occupational hourly earnings data from the New Earnings Survey and applying decomposition of the Theil index of wage inequality to analyse both static and dynamic trends. The change in wage inequality for the period 1986 to 1995 primarily reflected the change in wage dispersion within the private sector, and the narrowing of the gender pay gap among the public sector workforce was an important factor in explaining the overall improvement in women's relative earnings. The paper argues that the relatively centralised pay arrangements in the public sector, compared with the private sector, played an important role in slowing the increase in wage inequality and narrowing the gender pay gap. As such, future policies to decentralise pay determination in the UK public sector may exacerbate the increasing level of wage inequality and reverse women's recent relative pay improvements.     

Gender Wage Gap: Some Recent Evidences from India

Gender wage inequality is a chronic socioeconomic malice in developed as well as in developing countries. This paper describes the outcomes of our study on the estimation of gender wage gap in the Indian labour market, using the 68th Round NSSO employment–unemployment data. The study uses Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique and Heckman two-step methodology, for removal of selectivity bias in the sample data, to measure the components of total gender wage gap, viz. (1) occupational segregation (explained by economic rationale) and (2) direct discrimination (not explained by economic rationale). The analysis indicates that the maximum direct discrimination is for job-related factors, such as industry type which are controlled by employers. The majority of the Indian employers today are men, which may be the reason for the insensitivity to the chronic direct discrimination against women in workplaces. The study also indicates that most of the explained gender wage gap is due to lower skill and experience amongst women. The findings suggest that besides labour law reforms for ensuring gender neutrality in workplaces, focused government policies for promoting women entrepreneurship and skill development of women are urgently required for reducing the gender wage gap in India.

     

NEGLECTED WOMEN AND OTHER IMPLICATIONS OF COMPARABLE WORTH

Comparable worth proposals presume that the gender wage gap is a result of occupational segregation. The proposals argue that females are channeled into "women's jobs" and that overcrowding depresses women's wages below the "value" of the work performed. Comparable worth legislation proposes replacing the idea of equal pay for equal work with a principle of equal pay for different work of comparable worth determined by job evaluations. Such job evaluations are feasible only for the public sector and large private employers. The analysis in this paper recognizes that comparable worth wage adjustments are to be limited to the large employers. It examines how employers in the covered sector tend to alter their pay packages and hiring standards. Comparable worth legislation also affects wages in the uncovered sector populated by small employers. The rationing of women's jobs and the changes in hiring standards for men's jobs in the covered sector tend to redound to the benefit of smart, energetic women and dull, indolent men.     

金融发展与地区实体经济资本配置效率-来自省级工业行业数据的证据

职位隔离是形成性别收入差距的重要机制.本文构建一个引入了职位晋升机制的收入差距分解方法,利用2006年中国综合社会调查数据,考察了职位隔离对性别收入差距的作用,且在统一的模型框架内识别和估计了职位内工资歧视(同工不同酬)和晋升歧视的程度.研究结果发现,女性过多地集中于职位"金字塔"结构的底层.尽管职位晋升的工资效应不存在显著的性别差异,但约41%的性别收入差距是由于职位隔离导致的.工资歧视是职位层级内部性别收入差距的主要来源.与之类似,职位晋升歧视能够解释1/4的性别收入差距.因此,除了同工同酬政策,促进职位晋升的机会平等是缩小性别收入差距的重要措施,意即"同酬"还需"同工".     

Equal Pay for Equal Work? Evidence from Sweden and a Comparison with Norway and the U.S.

Using a new data set covering most privately employed workers in Sweden, we compare gender wage differences to those previously reported for Norway and the U.S. The central finding is that the wage gap is small when comparing men and women working in the same type of occupation for the same employer. Segregation of men and women by occupation accounts for more of the gap in Sweden than in the other two countries. In all three countries, we find that segregation by occupation explains more than segregation by establishment, and that institutional changes over the past two decades aimed at improving the status of women had little effect on the gender wage gap.
JEL classification : J 16; J 71     

Ocupational segregation,labour force participation and the relative earnings of men and women

A model of the labour market is developed in which particiaption rates of men and women,wages rates of men and women and occupational segregation are determined simultaneously. The model is estimated using cross-sectional data from Australia. The most important empirical results are that (a) particiaption rates,wage rates and occupational segregation should be viewed as being simultaneously determined,(b) differences in male and female labour-force attactment and human capital attainment are important determinants of the gender composition of occupations and (c)there is little direct evidence in this study to support discrimination-based theories of occupational segregation.     

Wage differences between Austrian men and women: <Emphasis Type="Italic">semper idem?</Emphasis>

In most OECD countries, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed during the past two decades. Developments of the last 20 years, e.g., increased labour market attachment of women or the introduction of equal pay laws, may have reduced the gender wage gap. We investigate the extent, persistence, and socio-economic determinants of the gender wage gap in Austria, for the years 1983 and 1997. Using wage decomposition techniques, we find that the average gender wage gap was almost as high in 1997 as it was in 1983. Not accounting for differences, the gender wage gap dropped from 25.5 to 23.3% of men’s wages. Taking observable differences between men and women into account, we estimate that the mean gender wage gap that cannot be explained, i.e., discrimination against women, dropped from 17 to 14% of men’s wages. A decomposition of the gender wage gap over time indicates that both returns to human capital and less discrimination were responsible for the narrowing of the gender wage gap.

"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 Gender Pay Gap by Occupation: A Test of the Crowding Hypothesis

Identified, structural wage equations for seven occupations are estimated to test the crowding hypothesis—that the gender pay gap is due to females being crowded into low-paying occupations—using data drawn from the 1996 wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79). Occupational preferences are used to estimate a logit probability model of occupational assignment to create instruments to control for self-selection. Wage equations are estimated for all workers and for full-time, year-round workers. Identical specifications are estimated for private-sector workers. The results are not consistent with a crowding explanation as the sole source of the gender pay gap unless crowding occurs at less aggregated levels of occupations than those used for this study. (JEL J16 , J31 , J71 )     

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.     

Decomposing Gender Wage Differentials Using Quantile Regression: Evidence from the Lebanese Banking Sector

This paper investigates gender pay inequality in the labor market of a developing country. Our empirical investigation uses data derived from a sample of employees in the Lebanese banking sector for the years 2008 and 2014. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, the results reveal that the unexplained component of the gender wage gap, attributed to discrimination, represents a substantial share of the total gap. A surprising result is that the contribution of human capital to the gender wage gap is negative, suggesting that wage discrimination is the main explanation for the gap. Utilizing the Machado-Mata methodology to decompose the wage gap across the entire wage distribution, our findings indicate that the unexplained component of the raw gender wage gap is more pronounced at the low and middle ranges of the distribution. However, the explained component dominates at the top of the distribution, suggesting that earnings gaps are fully explained by observed characteristics.     

Trends in the Australian Gender Wage Differential over the 1980s: Some Evidence on the Effectiveness of Legislative Reform

The article examines the legislative reforms incorporating the Sex Discrimination Act and the Affirmative Action Act introduced during the 1980s. We utilise the Australian Bureau of Statistics Income Distribution Surveys 1981–82 and 1989–90 to reflect pre- and post-legislative reform.
The article adopts the Brown, Moon and Zoloth (1980) methodology which treats both the wage and occupational status of the individual as endogenously determined. In the current context this is a particularly flexible framework allowing one to capture both the direct and indirect effects of the legislative reforms. The indirect effect refers to the narrowing of the gender wage gap associated with legislative manipulation of the male-female occupational distributions.
The results contrast the slow convergence in the gender wage gap during the 1980s with the much faster pace of the 1970s. The article concludes that despite the focus of the 1980s legislation on employment equity, changes in the male-female occupational distribution over the period are small and the associated impact on gender wage convergence is also small.     

Wage discrimination,occupational segregation and visible minorities in Canada

The earnings gap between each of Whites, Asians, and Blacks is decomposed into the effects on earnings of productivity-related characteristics, wage discrimination and occupational segregation. Unlike previous Canadian studies, this paper analyses the relative economic position of both immigrant and native-born visible minorities and explicitly incorporates the effect of discrimination in occupational attainment on the earnings gap. The results indicate that policies aimed at increasing the ethnic representation across occupational categories would be effective only for Black men. Anti-discrimination legislation aimed at decreasing the earnings gap between visible minority and White women should have a dual focus: they should aim at reducing the inter-occupational wage discrimination; they should provide training programs to extend the career ladders confronting ethnic minority women.     

The gender pay gap in Russia during the transition, 1992-96

This paper explores the link between rising wage dispersion in Russia over the transitional period and the gender pay gap. The work of Blau and Kahn (1996) emphasized a role for 'wage structure' in the determination of the gender pay gap, although some interpretational issues concerning their methodology have been raised recently by Suen (1997). The unadjusted gender pay gap between 1992 and 1996 exhibited some degree of stability, but the analysis presented identified increased wage dispersion as a modest agent for the widening of the gap in Russia. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates for an equation pooling observations from both gender groups, registered no statistical difference in the mean ceteris paribus gender pay gap between the two years. To complement the mean regression approach, quantile regression procedures were also employed. Although the median regression provided evidence of a statistically significant temporal increase in the gender pay gap, this finding was not supported at other chosen quantiles of the wage distribution. This result was taken to highlight the possible sensitivity of the OLS procedure.
JEL classification: J16, J31, P23.     

Increasing earnings inequality and the gender pay gap in Canada: Prospects for convergence

This paper retraces the evolution of Canadian women's labour force participation and of the gender earnings ratio across the generations to understand better the prospects for gender convergence in pay. Using data from the public use Labour Force Surveys (LFS) and administrative annual earnings data from the Longitudinal Worker Files (LWF), the paper assesses the role of increasing top earnings inequality in the persistence of the gender pay gap. Having identified a growing role for the under‐representation of women among top earners, the paper then performs an evaluation and critical analysis of existing gender equality policies, centred on horizontal occupational gender segregation, and discusses alternative policies for the future.