Gender Gaps in Spain: Policies and Outcomes over the Last Three Decades

Ezgi Kaya, Virginia Sánchez-Marcos and Nezih Guner
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Virginia Sanchez-Marcos

No 751, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: We document recent trends in gender equality in employment and wages in Spain. Despite an impressive decline in the gender gap in employment, females are still less likely to work than males: about 76% of working age males and 63% of working age females were employed in 2010. If females work they are more likely to be employed part time and with temporary contracts. The large increase in female employment, from 28% in 1977 to 63% in 2010, was accompanied by a significant decline in fertility. The gender gap in wages, after controlling for worker and job characteristics as well as for selection, is high. It was about 20% in 2010, quite close to its value in 1994. Furthermore, the gender gap in wages is driven mainly by differences in returns to individual characteristics. While women are more qualified than men in observable labor market characteristics, they end up earning less. There have been several important policy changes that try to help families reconcile family responsibilities with market work. The existing literature suggests that households do react to incentives generated by different policies and policy changes are at least partly responsible for changes in female labor supply. In recent decades, the large inflow of immigrants, who provided relatively cheap household services, allowed more educated women to enter the labor market. Policy challenges, however, remain.

Keywords: selection; gender employment gap; gender wage gap; occupational segregation; quantile regressions; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J21 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Gender gaps in Spain: policies and outcomes over the last three decades (2014)
Working Paper: Gender Gaps in Spain: Policies and Outcomes over the Last Three Decades (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:751

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