Foreign-owned firms and occupational gender pay inequality

Despite significant progress in gender equality over the past decades, women's access to equal pay is still a persistent and complex issue. Recent research on the gender pay gap in foreign-owned companies has illuminated the possible effects of foreign ownership on the gender wage gap, emphasizing the significance of addressing this problem for advancing gender equality in the context of global trade and economic growth. This paper examines the gender pay gap in Kazakhstan, with a focus on the impact of foreign ownership and the gender-occupational composition of firms. The study aims to identify the underlying sources of the gender pay gap and whether it can be attributed to either wage discrimination or productivity differences, and how the institutional background of Kazakhstan may influence this issue. Our primary estimation technique throughout the analysis is the reduced-form linear probability model. We show that the gender pay gap is higher in foreign-owned firms, especially for managerial positions. Interestingly, our findings align with distinct sources of the disparity in foreign-owned firms and domestic firms. For foreign-owned firms, we find a gender wage gap only in management positions, consistent with a wage gap driven by work requirements that disproportionately impact women in career advancement. For domestic-owned firms, we find a rural versus urban difference in the gender wage gap which indicates discrimination based on traditional gender stereotypes. We do not find any evidence to suggest that the wage disparity is due to productivity differences. Based on our findings, policy measures should include flexible work arrangements that enhance temporal flexibility to reduce the gender pay gap and improve outcomes for female employees.