PAY GAP BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

PAY GAP BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

Abstract

Studies have shown that women receive lower wage returns to attained occupational prestige than do men. In this article, it is examines whether the gender difference in wage return for attained occupational prestige can be explained by men's and women's different family obligations, and whether gender differences in work characteristics, which are difficult to combine with family duties, account for some of the gender wage gap in returns for attained occupational prestige. If women's family obligations were a major cause of women's disadvantage, the negative interaction between women and occupational prestige with regard to wages would be larger for mothers and married/cohabiting women than for single women without children. Results show a gender wage gap between married/ cohabiting men and women with children that increases with occupational prestige. However, the interaction between gender and prestige is insignificant among single women and men and among married/cohabiting respondents without children. Furthermore, when controlling for time-consuming work, the gender wage gap for married/cohabiting respondents with children according to occupational prestige narrows, especially in occupations with high prestige.

Pay gap between women and men

Introduction

Men and women live in quite different working worlds. To start with, there is still a considerable income gap in favor of men, particularly in the developing countries, even though it has been reduced in the last decades. Furthermore, a high percentage of women think that they do not have equal labor opportunities to men when it comes to promotions into management positions. According to the last five annual Wage Indicator surveys, two out of three managers are male. In production and specialized services, the proportion of male managers rises to 80 per cent, but it decreases to 60 per cent in the administrative and commercial sectors. In parallel, the tradition that links women to the household tasks remains widespread. Moreover, 75 % of the female respondents say they carry out most of the household tasks, while only a quarter of the male respondents indicate to be in charge of most of the domestic work.

Discussion and Analysis

The difference between average hourly earnings of female workers and male is called the pay gap between women and men. The pay gap between women and men reflects the discrimination and inequality that plague the labor market, mainly at the expense of women. Its causes are complex and interrelated (Manning, 2006).

We all know that when we say that women earn less than men do in general, one get a strong support and immediate recognition of the injustice that this entails. The latest data on wages say, for example, in Madrid the average wage of men is higher than the 25,000 per year, while the women do not reach 18,000. This gives us a difference of more than 7,000 per year in average salaries between women and men. The data, itself, is a perfect indicator to illustrate the situation of employment discrimination based on sex that occurs in labor relations should open the door ...