Women’s Union Awakening: Early Impacts on Gender Wage Gaps (Yecla, Spain, 1895-1935)

This study examines the determinants of labor force participation for men and women in Guinea for three sectors and for earnings. Employment includes self-employment private wage employment and public wage employment. Data were obtained from a survey of 1725 households in the capital city of Conakry in 1990. Labor force participation (LFP) was 40% for women aged 15-65 years and almost 100% for men aged 30-50 years. Men were engaged almost equally in all three sectors while women were mostly engaged in self-employment. Self-employed women tended to come from low-income households. All public sector employees were well-educated (about 10-12 years). Average levels of education among the self-employed were very low (2-3 years). In the private wage sector men averaged 5 years and women averaged 9 years of schooling. 47% of men and 59% of women in the public sector were in professional or managerial jobs. In the private sector over 50% of women were in professional managerial or clerical jobs compared to only 16% of men. Few women in the private sector were engaged in skilled trades or unskilled work. Most self-employed women and only 50% of men tended to work in retail trade. Migration during the past 5 years was positively associated with mens entry in self-employment and the private sector and negatively associated with their public sector employment. Determinants of womens self-employment included residence near commercial areas of the center city electricity in the house and work activity during the rainy season of April-September. Fulani and Malinke women were less likely to be self-employed. For women the benefits of education and experience declined after a certain level. Returns to schooling were high for both genders. Men earned more than women. There is a need to increase educational and employment opportunities for women.

South Korea’s gender wage and employment gaps are among the largest in the OECD. Using labour force survey data over 2010–19, we estimate gender wage and employment gaps, and child earnings penalties, for women aged 25–54. We show (i) that the large gender gaps in South Korea’s labour market are mostly not a function of differential sorting by gender along education, occupation, or industry lines, (ii) that caring for children (and, perhaps increasingly, for the elderly) is the major factor inhibiting women’s labour force participation, and (iii) that large gender wage gaps exist even for women without care responsibilities. These findings suggest that improving opportunities for work–family balance is crucial to helping increase women’s labour force participation, but may do little to close gender wage gaps: other major obstacles also appear to stand in the way of Korean women’s full inclusion in the labour force.

Despite large literatures on gender and family wage gaps (e.g., the motherhood wage penalty, fatherhood wage premium, and the marriage premium) and widespread recognition that the two gaps are intertwined, the extent and pattern of their relationships are underexplored. Using data from the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we show that family wage gaps are strongly associated with the gender wage gap, as long assumed in the literature, but with important caveats. The gender-differentiated wage returns to parenthood contribute 29 percent of the gender wage gap. One third of this is associated with occupation, but very little with other worker and job attributes. The gender-differentiated returns to marriage contribute another 33 percent, two thirds of which is associated with worker and job attributes but very little with occupation. However, 36 percent of the gender wage gap is unrelated to these family wage gaps, and the gender wage gap among childless workers remains substantial. Moreover, for Black and Hispanic workers, the pattern of association is more complex and generally weaker than for White workers. These results caution against focusing solely on the wage gap between “mothers and others” and suggest new directions for research.

The paper uses a panel of Ghanaian manufacturing data to examine the existence or nonexistence of labour market gender discrimination by comparing gender wage and productivity gaps for the period 1992–2003. In addition, the study investigates factors that affect the share of female employment. Results suggest that gender wage and productivity gaps exist in the manufacturing sector of Ghana. We also find no evidence of within‐firm gender wage discrimination, suggesting that the gender wage gap can be attributed largely to between‐firm wage inequalities and sorting of female workers to low productivity and low wage firms in the sector. Besides, our findings support the argument that globalisation and firm‐age are important in encouraging female employment which serves to reduce gender discrimination. Contrary, skill‐ and capital‐intensive firms have a lower share of female employees.

The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing gender income gaps by redistributing between men and women. In this paper, we study the effect of tax-benefit policy on gender differences in income in the EU27 countries and the UK. We use microsimulation models linked to survey data to estimate gender gaps in market income (before taxes and transfers) and disposable income (after taxes and transfers) for each country. We then decompose the difference between the gender gap in market income and the gender gap in disposable income into the relative contribution of taxes and benefits in each country. We also isolate the relative contributions of the gender wage gap and the gender work gap to the overall gap in income between men and women in two of these countries.

The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing gender income gaps by redistributing between men and women. In this paper, we study the effect of tax-benefit policy on gender differences in income. We use microsimulation models linked to survey data to estimate gender gaps in market income (before taxes and transfers) and disposable income (after taxes and transfers) for each country. We develop a method to isolate the relative contributions of the gender wage gap and the gender work gap to the overall gap in income between men and women. We then decompose the difference between the gender gap in market income and the gender gap in disposable income into (i) the relative contribution of taxes and benefits in each country and (ii) the relative cushioning of the gender wage gap and gender work gap. Policy conclusions are drawn about redistribution between men and women.

What is the impact of the gender pay gap in academia over the course of a career and retirement? To quantify this impact, we used a Canadian post-secondary institution as a case study and simulated the effects of the reported difference in salary across multiple academic career trajectories. A starting wage gap of less than $9,000 resulted in a $300,000–$400,000 gender wage gap over the course of a career, and a further $148,000–$259,000 gender pension gap, for a total gender pension and wage gap of $454,000–$660,000, depending on the rank achieved. Thus, focusing on gender gaps in salary alone leads to a substantial underestimation of the long-term effects of the gender gap.

Returns to labor for workers with similar endowments of productive characteristics in Ecuador are influenced by two characteristics that, arguably, should play no role on the determination of wages: gender and ethnicity. This paper analyzes wage gaps due to both characteristics in Ecuador for the period 2003-2007, applying a matching comparisons technique developed in Nopo (2008). The results indicate ethnic wage gaps that are notably higher than gender wage gaps. Furthermore, ethnic wage gaps are higher among males than among females. Differences in human capital characteristics, however, explain almost one-half of the ethnic wage gaps but only a small fraction of the gender wage gaps. Both gender and ethnic wage gaps are more pronounced at the lower extremes of the earnings distribution.

Returns to labor for workers with similar endowments of productive characteristics in Ecuador are influenced by two characteristics that, arguably, should play no role on the determination of wages: gender and ethnicity. This paper analyzes wage gaps due to both characteristics in Ecuador for the period 2003-2007, applying a matching comparisons technique developed in Ñopo (2008). The results indicate ethnic wage gaps that are notably higher than gender wage gaps. Furthermore, ethnic wage gaps are higher among males than among females. Differences in human capital characteristics, however, explain almost one-half of the ethnic wage gaps but only a small fraction of the gender wage gaps. Both gender and ethnic wage gaps are more pronounced at the lower extremes of the earnings distribution.

While it is assumed that trade unions may influence the gender wage gap, evidence is scarce on this issue. This study investigates the issue in China using national longitudinal survey data from 2010 to 2020. The results reveal that the union wage premium is greater for women than for men. Furthermore, the union wage premium is more beneficial for women in the public sector compared to the private sector. The gender disparity in endowment return effect among non-union members is the primary factor contributing to the formation of the gender wage gap in both public and private sectors, with the effect being more pronounced in the public sector. Additionally, the gender disparity in unionism reduces the gender wage gap in the public sector while widening the wage gap in the private sector.

The gender pay gap (GPG) exists in every European country, but it varies considerably, even in EU member states covered by the same legal principles on pay equality. Part of the variation can be explained by different patterns of social partnership. With current policy pressure to de-centralise collective bargaining and increase the percentage of pay linked to productivity, what role can social partnership play in tackling the GPG? Reporting on the findings of the European Commission funded research project ‘Close the Deal, Fill the Gap’, this book uses an interdisciplinary analysis involving legal, economic and sociological expertise, to explore the role of social partnership in GPG in Italy, Poland and the UK. Selected on the basis of their contrasting profiles in terms of legal regulation, industrial relations, systems of collective bargaining, coverage of collective agreements and differing rates of the GPG, the in-depth study provides important insights into the main issues underlying the problem of reducing the GPG which have led to guidelines in the negotiation of arrangements on GPG-related issues. Based on a unique comparative, interdisciplinary and action-oriented research project, it will be of great interest to all researchers and advanced students with an interest in women’s representation in the workforce and the GPG, as well as practitioners and policy makers in organisations such as trade unions and employers’ associations.

BackgroundThe feminisation of the global health workforce presents a unique challenge for human resource policy and health sector reform which requires an explicit gender focus. Relatively little is known about changes in the gender composition of the health workforce and its impact on drivers of global health workforce dynamics such as wage conditions. In this article, we use a gender analysis to explore if the feminisation of the global health workforce leads to a deterioration of wage conditions in health.MethodsWe performed an exploratory, time series analysis of gender disaggregated WageIndicator data. We explored global gender trends, wage gaps and wage conditions over time in selected health occupations. We analysed a sample of 25 countries over 9 years between 2006 and 2014, containing data from 970,894 individuals, with 79,633 participants working in health occupations (48,282 of which reported wage data). We reported by year, country income level and health occupation grouping.ResultsThe health workforce is feminising, particularly in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. This was associated with a wage gap for women of 26 to 36% less than men, which increased over time. In lower- and upper-middle-income countries, an increasing proportion of women in the health workforce was associated with an increasing gender wage gap and decreasing wage conditions. The gender wage gap was pronounced in both clinical and allied health professions and over lower-middle-, upper-middle- and high-income countries, although the largest gender wage gaps were seen in allied healthcare occupations in lower-middle-income countries.ConclusionThese results, if a true reflection of the global health workforce, have significant implications for health policy and planning and highlight tensions between current, purely economic, framing of health workforce dynamics and the need for more extensive gender analysis. They also highlight the value of a more nuanced approach to health workforce planning that is gender sensitive, specific to countries’ levels of development, and considers specific health occupations.

Using a rich matched employer-employee data set from Sweden, the author examines whether female managers in a firm narrow the gender pay gap. The study's main contribution is its ability to account for unobserved heterogeneity among both workers and firms that is potentially correlated with manager gender. The results show a substantial negative association between the representation of female managers and the establishment's gender wage gap. Estimates that account for sorting on unobserved worker skills, however, do not support the conclusion that managers favor same-sex workers in wage setting. Additional results show that organizations with more female managers recruit more nonmanagerial, high-wage women. Together these findings suggest that associations between manager gender and male-female wage gaps should be interpreted with caution, as worker sorting seems to be a crucial component behind this relationship.

The aim of my dissertation is to study the gender wage gap with a specific focus on developing and transition countries. In the first chapter I present the main existing theories proposed to analyse the gender wage gap and I review the empirical literature on the gender wage gap in developing and transition countries and its main findings. Then, I discuss the overall empirical issues related to the estimation of the gender wage gap and the issues specific to developing and transition countries. The second chapter is an empirical analysis of the gender wage gap in a developing countries, the Union of Comoros, using data from the multidimensional household budget survey “Enquete integrale aupres des menages” (EIM) run in 2004. The interest of my work is to provide a benchmark analysis for further studies on the situation of women in the Comorian labour market and to contribute to the literature on gender wage gap in Africa by making available more information on the dynamics and mechanism of the gender wage gap, given the limited interest on the topic in this area of the world. The third chapter is an applied analysis of the gender wage gap in a transition country, Poland, using data from the Labour Force Survey (LSF) collected for the years 1994 and 2004. I provide a detailed examination of how gender earning differentials have changed over the period starting from 1994 to a more advanced transition phase in 2004, when market elements have become much more important in the functioning of the Polish economy than in the earlier phase. The main contribution of my dissertation is the application of the econometrical methodology that I describe in the beginning of the second chapter. First, I run a preliminary OLS and quantile regression analysis to estimate and describe the raw and conditional wage gaps along the distribution. Second, I estimate quantile regressions separately for males and females, in order to allow for different rewards to characteristics. Third, I proceed to decompose the raw wage gap estimated at the mean through the Oaxaca-Blinder (1973) procedure. In the second chapter I run a two-steps Heckman procedure by estimating a model of participation in the labour market which shows a significant selection bias for females. Forth, I apply the Machado-Mata (2005) techniques to extend the decomposition analysis at all points of the distribution. In Poland I can also implement the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition over the period 1994-2004, to account for effects to the pay gap due to changes in overall wage dispersion beyond Oaxaca’s standard decomposition.

The "Unexplained" Portion of the Gender Pay Gap in Anesthesiology.