Has the gender wage gap narrowed or widened in a decade? Some recent evidence from the Turkish labor market

Abstract

The principal objective of this study is to determine the variation in the gender wage gap in the last decade of the Turkish labor market and reveal possible factors that drive the wage disparities. Therefore, the data set covers the Household Budget Statistics surveys 2009 and 2018. In order to prevent biased results, the empirical strategy contains the two-stage model estimation and selectivity corrected decomposition approach. The findings claim a widening gender wage gap in a decade. The portion of the gender wage gap resulting from the labor market discrimination tends to increase whereas the wage gap based on the gender differences in characteristics decreases. Despite the decrease, if the female employees had the same characteristics as males, their mean wages would be higher. Moreover, the gender wage gap attributable to gender discrimination in the labor market continues to increase.