Le salaire moindre des femmes : une question d’individu ou de profession ?

To what extent does the women?s wage penalty depend on their own characteristics or on the feminization of the occupation they hold? How does the interaction between individual and occupational levels in explaining gender wage disparity evolve from the beginning of working life to a decade of experience, when family building influences the wages of women and men? A multilevel modelling approach is applied to individuals working in private sector jobs with data from the Generation 98 survey and population censuses. It is shown that female dominated occupations are less paid than others, for men and women (??8%) whereas the wage penalty for being a woman is around 4% at the start of working life. The occupational wage effect still prevails after ten years of career, but only for workers without children. Considering men and women with children, the penalty on women is obvious (??21%) whereas the one linked to having a female dominated occupation has a more limited effect (??8%) and concerns mothers only.