An investigation of the relationship between job characteristics and the gender wage gap

Abstract

This paper re-examines gender wage differences, taking into account not only worker characteristics but also job characteristics. Consideration of a wide set of “job quality” indicators can explain a fraction of the wage gap that would otherwise be attributed to pure wage discrimination. In any case, the fraction of the wage gap that remains associated to differential rewards for identical factors across sexes is still substantial. Our results suggest that in order to avoid overestimation of the fraction of the wage gap attributable to discrimination, it is necessary to control for job characteristics.We gratefully acknowledge financial support from DGES project PB98-1058-C03-03 and from the Instituto de la Mujer, Project VS/2001/0497