Female-Worker Representation Effect: Gender Pay Variation in the Kuwaiti Civil Service

Mohamed Ihsan Ajwad, Simon Bilo, Ha Nguyen, Ebtesam AlAnsari, Lama AlHumaidan and Faleh M F E Alrashidi

No 10509, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Kuwaiti women working in Kuwait’s civil service earn, on average, 18 percent less than Kuwaiti men. Using a unique data set of all Kuwaiti nationals working in Kuwait’s civil service, this paper analyzes the relationship between wages, gender, and the relative dominance of women in occupations and workplaces. The main finding is that an important portion of the association between gender and wages is explained not by human capital but by occupational and workplace segregation of men and women. Occupations with a higher ratio of women to men tend to have lower wages for both genders when compared to workers in occupations with a lower ratio of women to men. This finding is especially true for women. Workplaces with a higher female-to-male ratio exhibit lower male wages but slightly higher female wages than workplaces with lower female-to-male workplace ratios. The paper calls this latter novel finding the female-worker representation effect.

Date: 2023-06-27
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