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Everything you always wanted to know about sex discrimination

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  • Paulo Guimarães
  • Pedro Portugal
  • Ana Rute Cardoso

Abstract

Earlier literature on the gender pay gap has taught us that occupations matter and so do firms. However, the role of the firm has received little scrutiny; occupations have most often been coded in a rather aggregate way, lumping together different jobs; and the use of samples of workers prevents any reliable determination of either the extent of segregation or the relative importance of access to firms versus occupations. Our contribution is twofold. We provide a clear measure of the impact of the allocation of workers to firms and to job titles shaping the gender pay gap. We also provide a methodological contribution that combines the estimation of sets of high-dimensional fixed effects and Gelbach's (2009) unambiguous decomposition of the conditional gap. We find that one fifth of the gender pay gap results from segregation of workers across firms and one fifth from job segregation. We also show that the widely documented glass ceiling effect operates mainly through worker allocation to firms rather than occupations.

Suggested Citation

  • Paulo Guimarães & Pedro Portugal & Ana Rute Cardoso, 2013. "Everything you always wanted to know about sex discrimination," Working Papers w201302, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ptu:wpaper:w201302
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Elise Coudin & Sophie Maillard & Maxime To, 2018. "Family, firms and the gender wage gap in France," IFS Working Papers W18/01, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Marta Silva & Luis Filipe Martins & Helena Lopes, 2015. "Asymmetric labour market reforms and wage growth with fixed-term contracts: does learning about match quality matter?," Working Papers Series 2 15-04, ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL).
    3. Card, David & Cardoso, Ana Rute & Kline, Patrick, 2013. "Bargaining and the Gender Wage Gap: A Direct Assessment," IZA Discussion Papers 7592, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Savina Finardi, 2022. "Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap in the Czech Republic and Selected European Countries," European Financial and Accounting Journal, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2022(2), pages 33-47.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

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