Seid Yimer, Sapienza Universita Roma: "Gender wage gap in Ghana manufacturing firms: Matched employer-employee data"

Abstract

This paper investigates  the sources of gender wage gap in Ghana manufacturing firms using demand and supply side determinants of individual wage and data spanning 1992-2003. The study provides statistical evidence against the use of gender dummy and Oaxaca and Blinder approaches in wage decomposition. Instead, the re-centered influence function quantile decomposition method has been used and we find that  gender pay gaps are indeed heterogeneous. Men’s wages are markedly  higher than women’s wages across the entire wage distributions. But, gender  wage gap  declines across distributions and this pattern is often described as sticky floor.  The strong and pervasive effects at  the bottom  quantiles suggest that poor women are more disadvantageous.  Pure productivity difference, which accounts for more than 60% of the gap at all quantiles, is the main factor behind gender disparity in  pay. Women are segregated in low paying firms, which explains at least 20% of the pay gap at all quantiles. Clustering and stratification problems associated  with data have been addressed  in  the decomposition ,  making  the findings  more dependable.