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Research papers on The gender pay gap

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  1. The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations

    Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn · 2017 · Journal of Economic Literature · 3,133 citations

    Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) microdata over the 1980–2010 period, we provide new empirical evidence on the extent of and trends in the gender wage gap, which declined considerably during this time. By 2010, conventional human capital variables taken together explained little of the gender wage gap, while gender differences in occupation and industry continued to be important. Moreover, the gender pay gap declined much more slowly at the top of the wage distribution than at the middle or bottom and by 2010 was noticeably higher at the top. We then survey the literature to identify what has been learned about the explanations for the gap. We conclude that many of the traditional

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  2. Gender Differences in Pay

    Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn · 2000 · The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 1,467 citations

    We consider the gender pay gap in the United States.Both gender-specific factors, including gender differences in qualifications and discrimination, and overall wage structure, the rewards for skills and employment in particular sectors, importantly influence the gender pay gap.Declining gender differentials in the U.S., and the more rapid closing of the gender pay gap in the U.S. than elsewhere, appear to be primarily due to gender-specific factors.However, the relatively large gender pay gap in the U.S. compared to a number of other advanced countries seems primarily attributable to the very high level of U.S. wage inequality.

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  4. Within-Job Wage Discrimination and the Gender Wage Gap: The Case of Norway

    T. Petersen, Vermund Snartland, Lars-Erik Becken, et al. · 1997 · European Sociological Review · 66 citations

    It has been established for the USA that men and women working in the same occupation for the same employer receive more or less the same pay. So-called within-job wage discrimination is hence not a driving force for the gender wage gap. Below we report the first comparative arid the second comprehensive empirical study of wage differences between men and women in the same specific occupation within the same establishment for a European economy: Norway. We report three striking findings. The first is that wage differences are relatively small when one compares men and women who work in the same occupation and establishment: women on average earn 2-6 per cent less per hour than men. The secon

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  5. Occupational gender wage discrimination in Turkey

    Orhan Deniz Kara · 2006 · Journal of Economic Studies · 65 citations

    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender based wage differences by schooling and occupations and to estimate the occupational gender wage discrimination in Turkey where strenuous attempts are underway to modernize and negotiate its culturally (Islamic)‐based gender differences. Design/methodology/approach This study employs an extension of Blinder and Oaxaca's approach to measure the effect of wage discrimination. In order to correct a possible sample selection problem, Heckman's two step procedure is used to estimate the earning equations for males and females by using Turkish Household Expenditure and Income Survey. Findings Among the paper's central findings is that gend

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  6. Gender wage transparency and the gender pay gap: A survey

    Morten Bennedsen, Birthe Larsen, Jiayi Wei · 2023 · Journal of Economic Surveys · 62 citations

    Abstract We survey the literature on the effects of increased transparency of gender segregated wages on the pay gap between men and women in comparable jobs. Pay transparency is promoted by countries and supra‐national institutions and we categorize reforms according to their content and coverage. A growing number of papers have used variations of difference‐in‐difference estimation methods to analyze the impact of reforms on the gender pay gap (GPG), and from these we extract four main findings: First, reform‐based studies find that pay transparency reforms reduce the GPG in all countries but one, which finds no effect. Second, in Canada, Denmark and the UK, the reduction in the GPG from t

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  7. Being a woman in an ICT job: an analysis of the gender pay gap and discrimination in Spain

    Mónica Segovia-Pérez, Rosa Belén Castro Núñez, Rosa Santero Sánchez, et al. · 2019 · New Technology, Work and Employment · 55 citations

    "Despite policy initiatives aimed at promoting female access to jobs, the information and communication technology (ICT) professions have traditionally been largely monopolised by men. Segregation, gendered stereotypes and environmental factors have a clear impact on educational and professional choices, as well as on working conditions. The spread of ICT to all economic activities has meant that ICT specialists are now to be found everywhere, not only in the ICT sector where many stereotypes related to technical jobs persist. This work aims to analyse the gender wage gap and discrimination in ICT professions, with the emphasis on how working in an ICT‐intensive industry might affect that si

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  8. Gender Wage Gap

    Joyce Jacobsen · 2016 · The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies · 21 citations

    Among full‐time workers, the gender wage gap is around 15 percent on average across a range of countries. Explanations for the gender wage gap fall into three categories: differences in human capital; differences in working conditions; and discrimination in pay, employment, and promotion. While pay discrimination can happen, discrimination can also occur in many subtle ways, leading to glass ceilings and crowding into particular occupations.

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  9. Pursuing equal pay for equal work: Gender diversity in management positions and the gender pay gap throughout the wage distribution

    Rosa Santero-Sánchez, B. Núñez · 2022 · BRQ Business Research Quarterly · 19 citations

    Despite the massive incorporation of women into the labor market, equal pay for equal work remains a challenge. This article analyzes the influence of gender diversity in management positions on the gender wage gap (GWG) throughout the entire pay scale in Spain. The results show the existence of a GWG, particularly for wages below the average; though it decreases when female participation in management is higher. This is in line with the reduction of information asymmetry problems considered in statistical discrimination theories, which explain the barriers to promotion associated with dynamics at entry-level and low-qualified positions. JEL CLASSIFICATION: C31, J31, J71, M14

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  10. Influence of female managers on gender wage gap and returns to cognitive and non‐cognitive skills

    Jiří Balcar, Veronika Hedija · 2019 · Gender, Work & Organization · 17 citations

    There is a modest but growing empirical body of evidence on the influence of managers' gender on the wages of their male and female subordinates. Most of these studies, however, suffer from a very raw approximation of the managers' gender by the share of women in charge, and often lack many important gender‐specific personal characteristics, such as non‐cognitive skills and life–work preferences, which can lead to biased results. This article copes with the mentioned deficiencies by employing a very rich and representative dataset of 1948 employees from the Czech Republic. It reveals surprising results as it shows that the gender of the manager has an effect on the level of wages, but not on

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  11. Using Occupational Preference in Estimating Market Wage Discrimination: the Case of the Gender Pay Gap

    Eric J. Solberg · 1999 · American Journal of Economics and Sociology · 15 citations

    ABSTRACT Past occupational preference is used to estimate the gender pay gap. The use of predetermined variables in a reduced‐form wage equation avoids the bias caused by using variables that are correlated with the random error. Using a gender coefficient, the potential discriminatory gap is about 11.5 percent when past occupational preference is included. Decomposition yields an estimate of 10.5 percent when past occupational preference is included. In both cases, the discriminatory gap is close to that obtained when actual occupation is included. This suggests public policy directed toward reducing hiring discrimination by gender might be misdirected.

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  15. Monopsonistic Discrimination and the Gender Wage Gap

    Erling Barth · 2018 · The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics · 7 citations

    Monopsonistic discrimination refers to a situation in which employers differentiate pay between groups of workers who exhibit different elasticities of labour supply. The concept of dynamic monopsony has revived the idea of monopsonistic discrimination in the labour market. As there are frictions in the job-to-job mobility of workers, firms may exercise market power even in labour markets with thousands of employers. If there are more frictions in the labour market for women than for men, a gender wage gap may arise as employers exploit this difference and segment their pay policy towards each gender.

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  16. The Gender Pay Gap: A Persistent Socioeconomic Challenge

    Stacey L. Morin · 2025 · SocioEconomic Challenges · 5 citations

    The gender pay gap remains a persistent socioeconomic challenge that limits economic growth and social equity, despite ongoing policy and corporate interventions. This study aims to analyze the key determinants of gender-based wage disparities, examining the historical evolution, theoretical explanations, and the role of institutional, policy, and corporate frameworks in shaping wage inequalities. The research focuses on occupational segregation, discrimination, labor market structures, and intersectional disparities to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms sustaining wage differences between men and women. Using a multidisciplinary approach, this study synthesizes existing

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  17. Breaking down the Gender Pay Gap through a machine learning model

    V. Edelsztein, Sebastián Ariel Waisbrot · 2023 · Convergencia Revista de Ciencias Sociales · 3 citations

    Being able to decompose the gender pay gap (GPG) and determine the contribution of each component is important to design appropriate policies to reduce it. With the aim of providing a new tool to achieve this, in this paper, we propose a decomposition approach based on a machine learning model. The tool was implemented on a population of 5,742 Argentinean IT-related workers to obtain the value of the adjusted and unadjusted GPG in a four-phase process: sample characterization, development of a wage predictor, calculation of adjusted GPG, and analysis of the explained component of GPG. According to our analysis, there is a GPG of 20%, 7,7% of which can be explained exclusively by direct discr

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  18. Gender pay gaps in the young adult labor force: prejudice-based discrimination or misreading of the observed-to-offered wage relationship?

    Radha Jagannathan, Michael J. Camasso, Jocelyn LaFleur · 2024 · Oxford Economic Papers · 3 citations

    Abstract We examine the plausibility of using prejudice-based discrimination to explain the wage differences among young men and women in eleven European countries. Utilizing a sample of over 20,000 individuals and estimating a series of country-specific regression models that adjust for ability and selection bias, we find evidence that leads to a good possibility of prejudice-based discrimination in Greece, Italy, Spain, Czechia, Hungary, and the UK. In the UK, this possibility of discrimination is mitigated to an extent by gender differences in credentials. In Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, we find no evidence for prejudice-based discrimination. Oaxaca decompositions reveal th

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  20. Gender pay gaps in Morocco: urban-rural disparities across the wage distribution

    Fatima Mounir, Said Hanchane, Khalid Soudi · 2025 · Development Studies Research · 2 citations

    ABSTRACT Gender pay gaps persist as a significant feature of labor markets in developing countries, with disparities varying across the wage distribution and between urban and rural areas. Using data from the 2012, 2015, and 2017 Labor Force Surveys, we investigate wage discrimination and its implications for women's labor force participation, incorporating corrections for potential selection bias. Beyond the traditional Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we employ the Recentered Influence Function decomposition to analyze gaps across the distribution. Our results show that wage gaps are more pronounced at the lower end of the distribution, suggesting that women face significant challenges in sec

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  21. Assessing Wage Inequality with Machine Learning: Approaches for Measuring the Adjusted Gender Pay Gap

    Oliver Plueghan, Katharina-Maria Rehfeld · 2026 · IU Discussion Papers Human Resources

    This paper investigates the methodological performance of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and Random Forest machine learning algorithms in measuring adjusted gender pay gaps. The research is motivated by the European Union’s Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970), which mandates that employers report adjusted gender pay gaps. While Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition and the underlying OLS regression have served as the industry standard for gap estimation, this paper examines whether machine learning approaches can better capture complex, nonlinear compensation relationships. Using synthetic datasets with controlled discrimination parameters, the study compares both methods across two sample

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  22. Factor Affecting the Wage Gap Between Women and Men (Gender Pay Gap) Among the Millenial Generation in West Nusa Tenggara: A Blinder Decomposition Approach – Oaxaca.

    Selly Rahmawati, Himawan Sutanto, Vici Handalusia Husni · 2026 · JURNAL ECONOMINA

    This study aims to analyze the factors that influence the wage gap between female and male workers (gender pay gap) in the millennial generation in Mataram City, West Nusa Tenggara. The analysis is carried out both from the aspect of human capital, such as education and work experience, as well as discrimination and socio-cultural factors. This research method uses the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition approach to distinguish the portion of the presentation caused by observable characteristics (explained) and the portion that cannot be explained (unexplained) which is often associated with discrimination. The results of the study are expected to provide an in-depth understanding of wage inequalit

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  23. Gender Pay Gap, Statistical Discrimination Based on Effort and Social Norms

    Edgar Villa Pérez, Luz Karime Abadía Alvarado · 2026 · Economics

    Abstract We develop a structural framework in which gender wage differentials arise as competitive equilibrium outcomes from effort-cost heterogeneity and employer expectations under imperfect information. In the model, caregiving responsibilities increase the cost of supplying work effort, particularly for women, while employers form wage offers using group-level expected productivity shaped by gender social norms. This interaction generates persistent gender wage gaps that can be decomposed into productivity-related differences and expectation-driven statistical discrimination. Using U.S. Current Population Survey data for 2002, 2014, and 2024, we estimate the wage equation implied by the

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  24. What lies behind the gender pay gap in Pakistan

    · 2025

    Despite global efforts, women in Pakistan still earn 25% less per hour than men, with disparities widening for older and lower-income workers. This policy brief highlights key barriers, including discrimination, weak compliance with labour laws, and wage inequalities in the informal economy. It also outlines potential solutions, such as gender-neutral job evaluations, minimum wage adjustments, and stronger labour law enforcement. By prioritizing these reforms, Pakistan can foster a fairer, more inclusive labour market and empower women to reach their full economic potential.

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