Abstract
Despite making significant progress in educational attainment and labor force participation, women in Vietnam continue to earn less than men, which is partly explained by their sorting into lower paid occupations. We explore three hypotheses for why women choose lower paid occupations and find that women may forego higher pay to work in occupations and industries which offer better non-monetary benefits: paid leave, lower weekly hours, health insurance and social insurance. This choice may be driven by an unequal distribution of house- and care- work.
Highlights
A gap in earnings between women and men in the labor force is a common empirical feature of the labor market in countries around the world
Having established that the gender wage gap persists in Vietnam despite women closing the education gap, and the role of occupation‐industry sorting, we evaluate our three hypotheses about the emergence of occupational sorting
We establish that the gender wage gap persists in Vietnam despite the fact that women have achieved similar levels of education as men or even surpassed men at higher levels of education
Summary
A gap in earnings between women and men in the labor force is a common empirical feature of the labor market in countries around the world. If differences in education levels do not play a role in explaining the gender wage gap in East Asian countries today, what factors are responsible for observed differences in wages between men and women? Sorting into different occupations occurs during school‐to‐work transition, because of gender specific barriers to finding jobs within one’s field of study We only test this hypothesis for individuals who have upper secondary, vocational or tertiary education, where specialization during study affects the types of jobs that are available.
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