Glass Ceilings, Sticky Floors or Sticky Doors? A Quantile Regression Approach to Exploring Gender Wage Gaps in Sri Lanka

Dileni Gunewardena, Darshi Abeyrathna, Amalie Ellagala, Kamani Rajakaruna and Shobana Rajendran

Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA

Abstract: Recently developed counterfactual techniques that combine quantile regression with a bootstrap approach allow for the interpretation of lower quantiles of the "simulated unconditional wage distribution" as if they related to poor people. We use this approach to analyse gender wage gaps across the wage distribution in Sri Lanka using quarterly labour force data from 1996 to 2004. Male and female wages are equal at the overall mean, but differ greatly between public and private sectors and across the wage distribution. We find that differences in the way identical men and women are rewarded in the labour market more than account for the difference in wages throughout the distribution. We find evidence of wider wage gaps at the bottom of the distribution in both sectors (indicative of "sticky floors"), but little evidence of larger gaps at the top of the distribution ("glass ceiligs"). Conditional wage gaps increase when controls for occupation, industry and part-time employment status are included, consistent with females selecting into occupations that better reward their characteristics. Policies that address gender bias in wage setting - especially in the low and unskilled occupations - are indicated, while policies that address gender bias in hiring and in workplace practices are likely to be more appropriate than policies that seek to improve womens' productivity-enhancing characteristics in reducing the gender wage gap.

Keywords: Gender gap; glass ceilings; sticky floors; quantile regression; public sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J31 J40 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://portal.pep-net.org/documents/download/id/13535 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2008-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Manuel Paradis ().