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Equal Pay as a Moving Target: International perspectives on forty-years of addressing the gender pay gap

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  • Jacqueline O’Reilly
  • Mark Smith
  • Simon Deakin
  • Brendan Burchell

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the key factors impacting upon the gender pay gap in the UK, Europe and Australia. Forty years after the implementation of the first equal pay legislation, the pay gap remains a key aspect of the inequalities women face in the labour market. While the overall pay gap has tended to fall in many countries over the past forty years, it has not closed; in some countries it has been stubbornly resistant, or has even widened. In reviewing the collection of papers that make up this special issue we identify four broad themes with which to group the contributions and draw out the explanations for diverse trends: theoretical and conceptual debates; legal developments and their impacts; wage setting institutions and changing employer demands; and newly emerging pay inequalities between and within educational and ethnic groups. Across the four themes we underline how the trends in the gender pay gap capture the dynamism of inequalities, as the market power of different groups and stakeholders changes over times. Three key dimensions emerge from the papers to provide a framework for future research and policy discourse: the relationship between litigation and bargaining strategies; the interaction between wage-setting institutions and new organisational practices; and the increasing and range of diversity or equality strands competing for equal treatment. We conclude that progress towards closing the gender pay gap will not be easy, will require a collective effort of various actors, and will not be quick.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacqueline O’Reilly & Mark Smith & Simon Deakin & Brendan Burchell, 2015. "Equal Pay as a Moving Target: International perspectives on forty-years of addressing the gender pay gap," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 39(2), pages 299-317.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:39:y:2015:i:2:p:299-317.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bev010
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Haya Stier & Efrat Herzberg-Druker, 2017. "Running Ahead or Running in Place? Educational Expansion and Gender Inequality in the Labor Market," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1187-1206, February.
    2. Núria Sánchez-Mira & Raquel Serrano Olivares & Pilar Carrasquer Oto, 2022. "What slips through the cracks: The distance between regulations and practices shaping the gender pay gap," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(2), pages 536-558, May.
    3. Pooja Sengupta & Roma Puri, 2022. "Gender Pay Gap in India: A Reality and the Way Forward—An Empirical Approach Using Quantile Regression Technique," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 10(1), pages 50-81, June.
    4. Santos, Sérgio P. & São José, José M.S., 2018. "Measuring and decomposing the gender pay gap: A new frontier approachAuthor-Name: Amado, Carla A.F," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(1), pages 357-373.
    5. Brendan Burchell & Darja Reuschke & Mary Zhang, 2021. "Spatial and temporal segmenting of urban workplaces: The gendering of multi-locational working," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(11), pages 2207-2232, August.
    6. Joanna Tyrowicz & Magdalena Smyk, 2017. "Pushed into necessity? Labor market inequality and entrepreneurship of disadvantaged group," GRAPE Working Papers 6, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    7. Depenbusch, Lutz, 2017. "Gender Price Gaps in Central Kenyan Vegetable Wet Markets," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 264021, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    8. Mariola Piłatowska & Dorota Witkowska, 2022. "Gender Segregation at Work over Business Cycle—Evidence from Selected EU Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-19, August.
    9. Anat Herbst-Debby, 2023. "What’s Your Pension Story? Women’s Perspectives during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Their Old-Age Pension Status, Past and Present," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(10), pages 1-20, May.
    10. Maffly-Kipp, Joseph & Eisenbeck, Nikolett & Carreno, David F. & Hicks, Joshua, 2021. "Mental health inequalities increase as a function of COVID-19 pandemic severity levels," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    11. Kamal, Mustafa & Blacklow, Paul, 2021. "Australian age, period, cohort effects in the gender wage gap - 2001 to 2018," Working Papers 2021-02, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics.
    12. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A., 2016. "Biology and Gender in the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 10386, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Minna Salminen-Karlsson & Anna Fogelberg Eriksson, 2022. "Decoupling gender equality from gender pay audits in Swedish municipalities," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(4), pages 1588-1609, November.

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