What Works? How Combining Equal Opportunity and Work–Life Measures Relates to the Within-Firm Gender Wage Gap

Charlotte K. Marx and Martin Diewald
Additional contact information
Charlotte K. Marx: Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Martin Diewald: Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 6, 1-34

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how organizational equal opportunity and work–life measures when combined are associated with the gender wage gap within large German establishments. By looking at both kinds of measures as parts of a comprehensive personnel strategy, we provide a novel way to distinguish between a career-supportive implementation of work–life measures versus implementation as a compensating differential. Using a linked employer–employee dataset, we performed a cross-sectional multilevel regression analysis with fixed effects for 6439 respondents within 122 establishments. The results indicate that work–life measures that support employees in their parenthood responsibilities are linked to a significantly higher GWG, particularly for parents. Our results indicate that the implementation of work–life measures is used as compensating differentials, primarily for mothers. Particularly, this can be found when looking at the combination of multiple measures. In combination with equal opportunity measures for women, work–life measures that highlight the long-term absence from the workplace are associated with a higher GWG for parents.

Keywords: work-life measures; HRM policies; gender wage gap; linked employer–employee data; work organizations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/6/251/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/6/251/ (text/html)

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:gam:jscscx:v:11:y:2022:i:6:p:251-:d:834249

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().