Search results

This study investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by analysing two waves of household surveys (in 2003–2004 and 2018–2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.

The study applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the re-centred influence function (RIF) regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution.

The results unambiguously show that there is a significant gender wage gap in Nigeria at all points along the wage distribution, such that for the two surveys used and after nearly two decades, men still earn more than women. That is, the log wage difference between males and females is statistically significant at all points between the 10th and the 90th quantiles. In 2003–2004 period, the authors found that most of the wage difference was significantly accounted for by the wage structure effect, whilst the composition effect was negative and only significant at the bottom of the wage distribution. Since the 2018–2019 period, the authors found that there has been a visible change such that most of the gender wage gap is now accounted for by the composition effect at all points along the wage distribution. Another interesting finding is that there has been a general decline in the gender wage gap along the entire wage distribution, such that inequality was higher in 2003–2004 than in 2018–2019. This decline is bigger at the top than at the bottom of the wage distribution. The authors also found that, contrary to some of the studies on the wage gap, the raw gaps for the two surveys appear to show inverted U-shape, but the gap has fallen quickly since the 2018–2019 period. Thus, the authors found strong evidence of a “sticky floor” compared to a “glass ceiling” effect in both periods, and this becomes more pronounced over time. In terms of the contributions of individual covariates on gender pay gap in Nigeria, the authors found that urban residence, unionisation, education and occupation variables exhibit major influence. However, the effects of covariates on the composition and wage structure components of the wage gap have changed over time.

The major policy implication of these findings is that to address the gender wage gap in Nigeria, policy should focus more on how labour is rewarded and improving human capital for women.

This study is a novel paper in Nigeria that has investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by extending the focus of literature in three ways. First, the authors applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the RIF regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution. Second, the authors used sample selection bias to account for the non-randomness of participation in wage employment. And third, the authors applied similar analysis to two waves of household surveys (in 2003/2004 and 2018/2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.

This paper investigates the relationship of both technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovation with the gender wage gap at firms.

Using employer–employee level data from Estonia, the authors estimate Mincerian wage equations, in order to show how innovation at the firm level is associated with the gender wage gap. Next, the authors use propensity score matching (PSM) to study the effects of the movement of men and women into innovative firms, how this shapes the gender wage gap at firms.

The authors find that both technological and non-technological innovation are associated with a larger gender wage gap at firms. The relationship between innovation and the contemporaneous gender wage gap at firms reflects to a significant extent the different selection of men and women with different time-invariant characteristics to innovative firms. Further, the authors find that movement of men and women to work at innovative firms is in longer term associated with larger gains in wages for men. The authors also observe that the relationship of innovation with gender wage gap is stronger in the case of women with children.

Much of the prior analysis focuses on the effects of technological innovation on gender-related labour market outcomes. The authors show here that the relationship of innovation at firms with higher gender wage gap is not only specific to technological innovation, but is more general, and is observed across different types of innovation indicators, including non-technological innovation. This study's results suggest that the effects of innovation on gender wage gap may reflect to an extent the higher demand for flexibility of employees for work purposes at innovative firms, which may increase the gender wage gap, especially between men and women with children.

The gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon in labor economics. Based on the 2018 Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), the authors estimate the impact of observable characteristics on the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries and provide policy recommendations on reducing the gender pay gap.

The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is applied to estimate the values of explained and unexplained parts of the gender pay gap. Gender pay gap in unadjusted as well as adjusted form is estimated using data on the individual level.

The results show that unadjusted gender pay gap proved to be stable at more than 20%. The authors found evidence that education widens gender pay gap implying that men have higher returns on education than women. Tertiary education proved to be the highest contributor to widening of gender pay gap. Results also show that there is strong sectoral and occupational segregation. Decomposition proved that only 21% of gender pay gap could be explained by observed characteristics. The unexplained part showed negative values, meaning women would have higher wages, if they had characteristics like men.

Structure of Earnings Survey data are published every four years; therefore the authors’ dataset from year 2018 might not completely reflect today's reality. Unfortunately, newer data are note available yet. Second, Structure of Earning Survey data do not contain variables representing social factors of respondents like marital status, number of children or labour market absence due to birth or childcare. Third, data used for this study do not contain firms that have less than 10 employees; therefore, considerable portion of the labour market is omitted.

Results of this study will help policymakers understand the roots and causes of the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries but addressing this issue requires further research.

The objective of this study is to estimate the gender wage gap in Vietnam and its rural and urban areas, especially with the presence of foreign firms.

The authors use cross-sectional data from three rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS 2008, 2012, and 2016) to investigate this issue. The unconditional quantile regression and Oaxaca–Blinder (OB) decomposition are used in this article.

The article finds the gender wage gap favouring men, especially in higher quantiles of the wage distribution. The gap in urban Vietnam was higher than in rural areas. The OB decomposition indicates that gender wage gap is mainly driven by gender discrimination. The differences in return to participation in foreign companies only contributed significantly and positively to such a gap in some models. It suggests that the gap in those models is affected by gender discrimination in employment opportunities in foreign companies. Regarding the endowment effect, some models provide the significantly negative impacts of foreign firms on gender wage inequality.

The study suggests that policies to reduce the gender wage gap should pay more attention to foreign firms, especially at higher wage classes.

Both academia and policymakers express a strong belief in higher average education levels exerting a narrowing impact on wage inequality in general and gender wage gaps in particular. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize whether or not this effect extends to R&D- and export-intensive branches such as the technology industry.

In exploring the impact of individual and job-related background factors and, especially, of job-task evaluation schemes on the size and change in gender wage gaps in the technology industry, the paper applies an elaborated decomposition method based on unconditional quantile regression techniques.

While changes in standard human capital endowments can explain little, if anything, of the growth in real wages or the widening of wage dispersion among the Finnish technology industry's white-collar workers, a new job-task evaluation scheme introduced in 2002 seems to have succeeded, at least in part, to make the wage-setting process more transparent by re-allocating especially the technology industry's female white-collar workers in a way that better reflects their skills, efforts and responsibilities.

One crucial implication of this finding is that improving the standard human capital of women closer to that of men will not suffice to narrow the gender wage gap in the advanced parts of the economy and, hence, not also the overall gender wage gap. The reason is obvious: concomitant with rising average education levels, other skill aspects have received increasing attention in working life. Consequently, a conscious combination of formal and informal competencies as laid down in well-designed job-task evaluation schemes may, in many instances, offer a more powerful path for tackling the gender wage gap.

While the existing evidence on the impact of performance-related pay on gender wage gaps is still scarce but growing the authors know of no empirical studies analyzing the gender pay-gap effect of job-task evaluation systems.

The paper intends to identify the factors that determine the variations in the gender pay gap and female workforce participation at low-skill manufacturing job across Indian states over the time period 2006–2014.

Gender pay gap is measured in two ways: one is scale insensitive and second one is scale sensitive. To construct scale-sensitive gender pay gap measure wage discrimination index is used. For main analysis, a panel framework is used. Fixed effect model and random effect model are estimated along with all relevant diagnostic tests.

Empirical analysis elucidates that male literacy rate, female literacy rate and gender parity index are important factors in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation at sub-national level in India. Female literacy rate significantly reduces the crude pay gap; however, it has insignificant effect on scale-sensitive gender pay gap in low-skill manufacturing sector. Educational enrolment widens up the crude wage gap but narrows down the other one. In case of workforce participation educational attainment and school enrolment both reduce women workforce participation in low-skill manufacturing job.

The present research suffers from two major limitations. Due to lack of information, the paper is unable to study the impacts of female representation in trade unions, availability of supporting infrastructure like day-care facilities for working mothers, etc. in explaining the variation in gender pay gap and women workforce participation. The second limitation is that the research fails to address the issue related to selection into employment. The present paper uses the macro-level state-specific statistics instead of micro-level data; hence the imputed wage for unemployed but potential workers cannot be calculated.

The paper is unique in the sense that it highlights gender pay gap and female workforce participation issue in low-skill manufacturing sector at Indian sub-national level. There are no such papers that highlight these issues in the context of Indian manufacturing sector. Another contribution is that the present paper considers the scale-sensitive gender pay gap, whose determinants are different than crude gender pay gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major determinants of establishment level gender pay gap, with a particular focus on analysing the effects of labor market institutions.

A two‐stages procedure is used in analysing the varying impacts of labor market institutions and firm level characteristics on gender wage gaps in the Nigerian urban labor market, using information from worker and establishment level survey data.

Primarily it was found that labor market institutions such as unions, and firm characteristics such as ownership, affect the level of gender wage inequality at the firm level. It was also found that unions have significant influence on firm level gender wage gaps in Nigeria, where they are historically known to be strong. Specifically the paper shows that wage gaps are higher in unionized firms in Nigeria because women are generally less likely to join unions, thus being less likely to benefit from union‐induced wage premiums; and within unionized firms a higher rate of unionization tends to reduce gender wage gaps because the higher the rate of unionization in a firm, the higher becomes the probability of women being members, and that raises the likelihood that they get union induced wage premiums. Public enterprises however are found to be more gender‐egalitarian compared with private firms; and firm level investment on workers' training plays an important gender wage‐gap narrowing role.

The paper is original in that it investigates the relationships between institutions and labor market outcomes in an African context, using survey data from the most populous country in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relevance of the glass ceiling effect, according to which the gender log wage gap accelerates in the upper tail of the wage distribution, at the firm level.

The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 4,654 employees, working in a French private company from the Defence and Aerospace sector. Quantile wage regressions were used to study whether a glass ceiling effect exits at the firm level. The difference between the male and female wage distributions is also decomposed into two components, one due to differences in labour market characteristics between men and women and one due to differences in rewards to these individual characteristics.

It was found that the gender wage gap measured through OLS is quite low, less than 8 per cent when controlling for age, experience, qualification and location. It remains rather flat along the wage distribution, a result which casts doubt on the glass ceiling theory. The gender gap is mainly due to differences in labour market characteristics rather than to differences in the rewards of these characteristics, especially among executives. Finally, women face a lower probability of reaching higher hierarchical positions within the firm.

Taking into account firm effects matters when measuring the magnitude of the gender wage throughout the wage gap distribution.

This paper presents original estimates of the gender wage gap with an unusual, firm‐based sample of workers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relation between occupational segregation and the gender wage differences using data on three-digit occupational level of classification. The authors examine whether a statistically significant relation between the share of men in employment and the size of the unexplained part of the gender wage gap exists.

Traditional Oaxaca (1973) – Blinder (1973) decomposition is performed to examine the differences in the gender wage gaps among minor occupational groups. Two types of reweighted decomposition – based on the parametric estimate of the propensity score and non-parametric proposition presented by Barsky et al. (2002) – are used as the robustness check. The analysis is based on individual data available from Poland.

The results indicate no strong relation between occupational segregation and the size of unexplained differences in wages. The unexplained wage differences are the smallest in strongly female-dominated and mixed occupations; the highest are observed in male-dominated occupations. However, they are probably to a large extent the result of other, difficult to include in the econometric model, factors rather than the effects of wage discrimination: differences in the psychophysical conditions of men and women, cultural background, tradition or habits. The failure to take them into account may result in over-interpreting the unexplained parts as gender discrimination.

The highest accuracy of the estimated gender wage gap is obtained for the occupational groups with a similar proportion of men and women in employment. In other male- or female-dominated groups, the size of the estimated gender wage gaps depends on the estimation method used.

The results suggest that decreasing the degree of segregation of men and women in different occupations could reduce the wage differences between them, as the wage discrimination in gender balanced occupations is the smallest.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few conducted at such a disaggregated level of occupations, and one of few studies focused on Central and Eastern European countries and the first one for Poland.

Since the mid‐1990s, offshore production has become increasingly important in white‐collar, service sector activities in the US economy. This development coincided with a stagnant gender wage gap in the service sector and a slowdown in the narrowing of the overall US gender wage gap over this period. This paper aims to categorize white‐collar service sector occupations into two groups based on whether an occupation is at risk of being offshored and to assess the relative contribution of these two groupings, through their employment and wages, to the trends in the gender wage gap within the service sector and the US economy between 1995 and 2005.

Standard occupational decomposition methods are applied to Current Population Survey and Displaced Workers Survey data.

The findings show that in occupations at risk of being offshored, low‐wage women's employment declined, leading to an artificial increase in the average wage of the remaining women thereby narrowing the gender wage gap. This improvement in the gender wage gap was offset by the relative growth of high‐wage male employment in at‐risk occupations and the widening of the gender wage gap within not‐at‐risk occupations.

These findings contribute to the growing literature on the causes of the stagnation of the US gender wage gap in the 1990s.