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The evolution of the gender pay gap has received a great deal of attention from academia and public opinion alike, yet our understanding of the differences in non-monetary working conditions is much scarcer. Through the use of the European Working Conditions Survey and six composite indicators of job quality, this research aims to expand our knowledge on the gender gaps in job attributes across the European Union over the period 2005–2015 in three ways: firstly, we explore gender differences in working conditions, revealing the distinct patterns identified by the dimensions of job quality and country; secondly, we find that, on average, women's relative position deteriorates in terms of the physical environment and working time quality; a result that again reflects considerable heterogeneity across the countries in the sample. Lastly, we find clear evidence of a catch-up process in job quality in all the non-monetary dimensions of working conditions across the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying twelve countries over 30 years, we examine whether women's educational expansion has translated into a narrowing of the gender gap in earnings when including persons with zero earnings. As educational attainment is cohort-dependent, an Age-Period-Cohort analysis is most appropriate in our view. Using the micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database, we show that while, in terms of attainment of tertiary education, women have caught up and often even outperform men, substantial gender differences in our earnings measure persist in all countries. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method in an innovative age-period-cohort approach, we demonstrate that the role of education in explaining gender earnings differences has been limited and even decreased over cohorts. We also conclude that, when including persons not receiving earnings, earnings differences at levels far from gender equality will likely persist in the future, even if the "rise of women" in terms of education continues—as the share of women in higher education increases and the returns to education in particular for women declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gender gap in time allocation in European countries, offering a comparison of the 2000s and the 2010s, along with an explanation of the documented gender gaps, based on social norms and institutional factors. The results show that the gender gap in both paid and unpaid work has decreased in most countries, but with a significant level of cross-country heterogeneity in the size of the gender gaps. More traditional social norms are related to greater gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work, while countries with better family-friendly policies and a greater representation of women in politics and in the labour market exhibit smaller gender inequalities. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of gender gaps in Europe, and attempts to monitor the progress towards the elimination of gender inequalities. Despite that some degree of gender convergence in paid and unpaid work has taken place, there remain inequalities in the distribution of labour in European countries, and possible solutions may be related to social norms and family-friendly policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the predominant conceptualization of the wage structure as gender-neutral, emphasizing the contribution that this makes to the gender wage gap. Unlike most decomposition analyses, which concentrated on gender differences in productivity-enhancing characteristics (the 'explained' portion), we concentrate on the 'wage structure' (the 'unexplained' portion), which can be defined as the market returns to productivity-enhancing characteristics. These returns are commonly considered a reflection of non-gendered economic forces of supply and demand, and gender differences in these returns are attributed to market failure or measurement error. Using PSID data on working-age employees from 1980 to 2010, we examine gender differences in returns to education and work experience in the U.S. labor market. Based on a threefold decomposition, we estimate the contribution of these differences to the overall pay gap. The results show that men's returns to education and work experience are higher than women's; and that in contrast to the well-documented trend of narrowing gender gaps in skills and earnings, the gaps in returns increase over time in men's favor. Furthermore, the existing gender differences in returns to skills explain a much larger proportion of the gender wage gap than differences in levels of education and experience between men and women. The paper discusses the mechanisms underlying these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden has been known for having one of the most equal income distributions in the world. However, in recent decades, Sweden has experienced increasing income inequality. An alternative way of measuring the development of inequality is to study and compare the income development within and between two birth cohorts according to gender and different positions of income distribution. The focus in this paper is to study how individual disposable personal income has changed by aging and at various positions of the income distribution, as well as the gender disposable income gap and intragenerational income mobility. Three positions of the income distribution were chosen: percentile 10; median; and percentile 99. Two cohorts, including all individuals born in 1948 and 1958, were tracked from 35 years of age to 53 years of age – with two 18-year overlapping periods, 1983–2000, and 1993–2010. The results show a complex and multifaceted image of the development of income inequality and mobility, within and between the two birth cohorts. Especially male low-income earners, born 1958, have been left behind. Income mobility differ according to gender where women have increased mobility in the bottom quintile and decreased in the top quintile, men experienced the opposite. When modelling mobility education have decreased to contribute to an upward mobility, especial for cohort born 1958. Taking all the results together, the development of increasing income inequality in Sweden is apparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relation between female activity in the labor market and gender wage gaps using regional data from Turkey. Labor force participation of women in Turkey significantly lags behind the developed countries but is increasing. At the same time, raw gender wage gap is quite low in international standards but also increasing. I use the regional variation to analyze the relation between female labor force participation and wage gaps in two steps. First, I estimate the unexplained wage gap, which filters out the gender differences in productivity characteristics for each region and each year between 2009 and 2018, using Household Labor Force Survey data. Then I analyze the relation between gender gap with female labor force participation and other regional characteristics in a panel data regression. The results of the paper suggest that female labor force participation is positively related with both raw and unexplained wage gap. This positive relation partially stems from the fact that women with less unobservable skills or career motivation enter into labor force in the process of increase in female employment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present empirical evidence that large structural shocks are followed by changes in labor market inequality. Specifically, we study short-run fluctuations in adjusted gender wage gaps (unequal pay for equal work) following episodes of structural shocks in the labor markets, using several decades of individual data for a wide selection of transition countries. We find that for cohorts who entered the labor market after the onset of transition. Labor market shocks lead to significant declines in the gender wage gap. This decrease is driven mostly by episodes experienced among cohorts who enter the labor market during the transition. By contrast, we fail to find any significant relation for cohorts already active in the labor market at the time of transition. We provide plausible explanations based on sociological and economic theories of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain using matched employer-employee microdata, two different econometric decomposition methods and panel data techniques. Our findings suggest that Spain shows a significant regional heterogeneity in the size of the raw gap, roughly comparable to cross-country differences observed in the European context. The results from the decomposition analysis show that although the bulk of the gender wage gap in Spanish regions is due to differences in the endowments of productive characteristics between males and females there is still a substantial part of the gap that remains unexplained. The analysis of the causes behind the variation of both, the raw and the unexplained gender wage gap by region highlights that several economic, institutional and demographic elements identified in previous studies analysing international differences in the gender wage gap are also relevant to explain regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]