The Glass Ceiling in Europe: Why Are Women Doing Badly in the Labour Market?
Date
2006-12
Authors
Booth, Alison L
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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University
Abstract
Average gender pay gaps have absorbed the interest of economists for many years. More
recently studies have begun to explore the degree to which observed gender wage gaps
might differ across the wages distribution. The stylised facts from these studies,
summarised in the first part of the paper, are that the gender pay gap in Europe is
typically increasing across the wages distribution. This finding - more pronounced in the
private than the public sector - has been interpreted as a glass ceiling effect. The
existence of this glass ceiling suggests that the average gender pay gap in Europe is
mainly due to the gender gap towards the top of the wages distribution. What explains
these stylised facts? We briefly outline some relevant hypotheses in the second part of the
paper. A fundamental challenge for labour economists is to identify the extent to which
these stylised facts are due to policies and institutions, discrimination, to other
unobservable factors, or to fundamental differences between men and women. Finally,
we briefly summarise the policy initiatives that might be introduced to deal with gender
wage gaps.
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Keywords
gender, discrimination, glass ceilings, sticky floors, quantile regression decompositions
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Working/Technical Paper
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Open Access
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