Ethnicity and Gender in the Labour Market in Central and South East Europe

Shane Niall O'Higgins

No 7667, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The Roma are both the largest 'minority' ethnic group in Central and South Eastern Europe and the one which suffered most from transition to the market. Still today, nearly forty years after the introduction of the EU's 1975 Discrimination Directive and with the end of the 'Roma Decade' (2005-15) in sight, people from the Roma minority have unemployment rates far above – and employment rates and wages far below – those of majority populations. One issue which has received relatively attention concerns the 'double' discrimination facing Roma women. Not only do Roma women face poorer employment and wage outcomes in the labour market than non-Roma women, in most CSEE countries the gender wage gap is significantly larger amongst Roma compared to non-Roma. This paper seeks to analyze and explain differences in the gender gap in the wages amongst Roma. The paper employs a non-parametric matching approach to identify the main factors underlying the gender wage gap. Educational attainment plays a relatively small role, explaining only around one-fifth of the gap. Industrial and occupational segregation appear to be playing a strong role as does the civil status of individuals, household socioeconomic status and whether individuals living in a predominantly Roma community.

Keywords: Roma; discrimination; gender; labour market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Cambridge Journal of Economics 2015, 39 (2), 631-654

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7667.pdf (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:iza:izadps:dp7667

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().