Les écarts de salaires entre les femmes et les hommes en Europe. Effets de structures ou discrimination ?

In this paper, we propose an analysis of the monthly wage gap in ten of the EU countries (Austria Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United-Kingdom). We use a standard methodology in order to measure the part of the gap which results from male-female differences in endowments and jobs, and the part that can?t be attributed to these differences, often referred to as "wage discrimination". The first component is then itself broken down into four parts: "human capital", "number of hours", "industry and skill level of the jobs", and "public sector". The ten countries differ significantly in the size of the gap; the decomposition shows that they differ also in the composition of this gap. Moreover, it appears that a large wage gap is not always associated with a high share of wage discrimination. With regard to the composition of the explained part of the gap, it appears at first? as could be expected?, that the greatest difference stands in the number of hours of work, neatly higher for men than it is for women, in all the countries. Another effect, this one in favor of women, is that of working in the public sector. The size and effect of each of the components is nevertheless unequal between countries; in terms of public policies, it suggests that the way towards closing the gap is not unique.