The gender wage gap in Egypt: public versus private sector

The Egyptian Government has taken important steps toward the achievement of "equal pay for work of equal value" between men and women, by recently extending the gender equality legislation from the public sector to the private one. In this paper, we measure the actual degree of gender wage equality in the public and private sectors of the Egyptian labour market, as well as its evolution over the last 20 years and its determinants. To this aim, we first apply the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition (with sample selection correction) to assess the role of characteristics and coefficients at the mean of the wage distribution in the two sectors. After that, we implement the Machado-Mata decomposition to assess the extent of the "discrimination" effect along the wage distribution in both sectors. To further the analysis, an innovative Inverse-Probability-Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) procedure is used to assess the joint impact on wages of being a woman and working in the private sector. Lastly, we analyze the cultural determinants of Egypt's low female participation. We find that discrimination plays an important role in the composition of the gap, albeit to a lesser extent in the public sector. We also find evidence of a sticky floor in the private sector and a glass ceiling in the public one. Overall, our results suggest that much remains to be done to reduce gender inequality by implementing more consistently the gender equality legislation in the private sector and seeking to break down cultural barriers to women's work.