Bad Karma Or Discrimination? Male-Female Wage Gaps Among Salaried Workers In India

We use data from the Employment-Unemployment Schedule of two large rounds of the National Sample Survey, viz., the 55th round in 1999-00 and the 66th round in 2009-10 to explore gender wage gaps among Regular Wage/Salaried workers, not only at the mean, but along the entire distribution to see “what happens where”. The average wage gap for RWS workers, expressed as a percentage of female average wages, has declined from 30 percent to 26 percent over this decade. Blinder- Oaxaca decompositions indicate that the bulk of the wage gap is unexplained, i.e. possibly discriminatory. While average characteristics for women in RWS have improved over the decade, the discriminatory component of the wage gap has also increased. In 2009-10, if women were paid like men, they would earn more than men on account their characteristics. Moving beyond averages, for both years, male wages are higher than female wages across the entire wage distribution. Also, for both years, we see the existence of the “sticky floor”, in that wage gaps are higher at lower ends of the distribution and steadily decline over the distribution. Machado-MataMelly decompositions reveal that RWS women at the lower end of the distribution face higher discriminatory gaps in wages.