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Article
Publication date: 27 September 2022

Gustavo A. García, Diego René Gonzales-Miranda, Óscar Gallo and Juan Pablo Roman Calderon

This study aims to measure the gender wage gap among millennial workers in Colombia and determine if there is a marked wage difference between millennial women and men…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to measure the gender wage gap among millennial workers in Colombia and determine if there is a marked wage difference between millennial women and men. Furthermore, this study analyzes whether millennial women face a glass ceiling, that is, whether there is a larger gender wage gap among workers earning relatively high wages.

Design/methodology/approach

The study data included a sample of 2,144 millennial workers employed in 11 organizations located in the five main cities of Colombia. Oaxaca–Blinder econometric methods of wage decomposition were used to calculate both raw and adjusted gender wage gaps. The latter results in estimating the gender wage gap while controlling for observable characteristics related to individual, family, and labor. In addition, wage decompositions by education levels were carried out to approximate the extent of the glass ceiling among young workers.

Findings

The results show that millennial workers in Colombia face gender inequality in the labor market and that professional millennial women experience a distinct glass ceiling. The adjusted gender wage gap is 9.5%, and this gap increases with education level, increasing to nearly 14% among college-educated workers.

Research limitations/implications

The empirical results are supported by a self-report survey of millennial workers. An important limitation is that the data include millennial workers employed in the formal sector and exclude the informal sector (activities not regulated or protected by the state), which represents an important part of the economy in developing countries.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on gender wage inequality for younger workers. This paper is original in reviewing the gender pay gap in Colombia using a primary dataset. Most of the work in this area has been done in developed countries and this research adds to the findings that have had focused on those nations.

Details

Employee Relations: The International Journal, vol. 45 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0142-5455

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 March 2021

Dao Dinh Nguyen, Xinran Zhang and Trang Huyen Nguyen

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.

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 49 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 May 2014

Rita Asplund and Reija Lilja

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…

1240

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Practical implications

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 35 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 February 2022

Simontini Das and Rhyme Mondal

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…

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Research limitations/implications

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 49 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 September 2008

Tilahun Temesgen

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…

1565

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 28 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 September 2008

Christine Barnet‐Verzat and François‐Charles Wolff

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…

7370

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Research limitations/implications

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

Originality/value

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

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 29 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 4 June 2018

Pawel Strawinski, Aleksandra Majchrowska and Paulina Broniatowska

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…

3874

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Research limitations/implications

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.

Practical implications

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 39 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 November 2010

Ebru Kongar and Mark Price

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…

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 31 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 September 2017

Jaanika Meriküll and Pille Mõtsmees

The purpose of this paper is to study gender differences in wage bargaining by comparing the unexplained wage gap in desired, realised and reservation wages.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study gender differences in wage bargaining by comparing the unexplained wage gap in desired, realised and reservation wages.

Design/methodology/approach

The notion of desired wages is applied, which shows workers’ first bet to potential employers during the job-search process. A large job-search data set is drawn from the main Estonian electronic job-search site CV Keskus.

Findings

It is found that the unexplained gender wage gap is around 20 per cent in desired wages and in realised wages, which supports the view that the gender income gap in expectations compares well with the realised income gap. The unexplained gender wage gap is larger in desired wages than in reservation wages for unemployed individuals, and this suggests that women ask for wages that are closer to their reservation wages men do. Occupational and sectoral mobility is unable to explain a significant additional part of the gender wage gap.

Originality/value

The paper adds to the scarce empirical evidence on the role of the non-experimental wage negotiation process in the gender wage gap. In addition, the authors seek to explain one of the largest unexplained gender wage gaps in Europe, the one in Estonia, by introducing a novel set of variables for occupational and sectoral mobility from a lengthy retrospective panel.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 38 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 May 2022

Victor Rudakov, Margarita Kiryushina, Hugo Figueiredo and Pedro Nuno Teixeira

The aim of the research is to estimate the level of the early career gender wage gap in Russia, its evolution during the early stages of a career, gender segregation and…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of the research is to estimate the level of the early career gender wage gap in Russia, its evolution during the early stages of a career, gender segregation and discrimination among university graduates, and to identify factors which explain early career gender differences in pay. Special emphasis is placed on assessing the contribution of horizontal segregation (inequal gender distribution in fields of studies and industries of employment) to early-career gender inequality.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on a comprehensive and nationally representative survey of university graduates, carried out by Russian Federal State Statistics Service in 2016 (VTR Rosstat). The authors use Mincer OLS regressions for the analysis of the determinants of gender differences in pay. To explain the factors which form the gender gap, the authors use the Oaxaca-Blinder and Neumark gender gap decompositions, including detailed wage gap decompositions and decompositions by fields of study. For the analysis of differences in gender gap across wage distribution, quantile regressions and quantile decompositions based on recentered influence functions (RIFs) are used.

Findings

The study found significant gender differences in the early-career salaries of university graduates. Regression analysis confirms the presence of a 20% early-career gender wage gap. This gender wage gap is to a great extent can be explained by horizontal segregation: women are concentrated in fields of study and industries which are relatively low paid. More than half of the gender gap remains unexplained. The analysis of the evolution of the gender wage gap shows that it appears right after graduation and increases over time. A quantile decomposition reveals that, in low paid jobs, females experience less gender inequality than in better paid jobs.

Social implications

The analysis has some important policy implications. Previously, gender equality policies were mainly related to the elimination of gender discrimination at work, including positive discrimination programs in a selection of candidates to job openings and programs of promotion; programs which ease women labour force participation through flexible jobs; programs of human capital accumulation, which implied gender equality in access to higher education and encouraged women to get higher education, which was especially relevant for many developing countries. The analysis of Russia, a country with gender equality in access to higher education, shows that the early career gender gap exists right after graduation, and the main explanatory factor is gender segregation by field of study and industry, in other words, the gender wage gap to a high extent is related to self-selection of women in low-paid fields of study. To address this, new policies related to gender inequality in choice of fields of studies are needed.

Originality/value

It has been frequently stated that gender inequality appears either due to inequality in access to higher education or after maternity leave. Using large nationally representative dataset on university graduates, we show that gender equality in education does not necessarily lead to gender equality in the labour market. Unlike many studies, we show that the gender gap in Russia appears not after maternity leave and due to marital decisions of women, but in the earliest stages of their career, right after graduation, due to horizontal segregation (selection of women in relatively low-paid fields of study and consequently industries).

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