The persistent gap: New evidence on the Canadian gender wage gap
by Marie Drolet
Business and Labour Market
Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 157
This
article investigates the extent to which factors not previously explored in the
Canadian context account for wage differences between men and women using data
from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).
Like other studies
using standard decomposition techniques and controlling for a variety of productivity-related
characteristics, the results demonstrate that men still enjoy a wage advantage
over women: women's average hourly wage rate is about 84% to 89% of the men's
average. Unlike other studies, controls for work experience and job-related responsibilities
are used. Gender differences in full-year full-time work experience explain at
most 12% of the gender wage gap. Gender differences in the opportunity to supervise
and to perform certain tasks account for about 5% of the gender wage gap. Yet,
despite the long list of productivity related factors, a substantial portion of
the gender wage gap cannot be explained.
Many studies rely on measures such
as age or potential experience (i.e. age minus number of years of schooling minus
six) as a proxy for actual labour market. Neither of these measures account for
complete withdrawals from the labour market nor for restrictions on the number
of hours worked per week or on the number of weeks worked per year due to family-related
responsibilities. The results show that proxies for experience yield larger adjusted
gender wage gaps than when actual experience is used.
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