IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/nzecpp/v38y2004i1p101-118.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The gender pay gap and the importance of job size: Evidence from the New Zealand public service

Author

Listed:
  • Michelle Gosse
  • Siva Ganesh

Abstract

This study examines the gender pay gap in the New Zealand Public Service in 2002, using the well-known Blinder-Oaxaca method to decompose pay differentials into explained and unexplained components. The major innovation of the paper is its introduction of a 'job size ' variable which proxies the seniority level of individual jobs, to supplement the standard variables such as occupation, age, tenure and ethnicity. The addition of job size to the model dramatically reduced the adjusted or unexplained gender pay gap to an almost negligible amount of 1.1 percent, and was the primary explanatory factor in pay differentials. The results suggest that, within the New Zealand Public Service, the gender pay gap is due to the horizontal and vertical segregation of female employees into lower paid occupations and jobs. Both sources of disparity will need to be addressed to remove the gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelle Gosse & Siva Ganesh, 2004. "The gender pay gap and the importance of job size: Evidence from the New Zealand public service," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 101-118.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:38:y:2004:i:1:p:101-118
    DOI: 10.1080/00779950409544396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00779950409544396
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00779950409544396?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Reilly & Tony Wirjanto, 1999. "Does More Mean Less? The Male/Female Wage Gap and the Proportion of Females at the Establishment Level," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 32(4), pages 906-929, August.
    2. Kimberly Bayard & Judith Hellerstein & David Neumark & Kenneth Troske, 2003. "New Evidence on Sex Segregation and Sex Differences in Wages from Matched Employee-Employer Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(4), pages 887-922, October.
    3. Naur, M. & Smith, N., 1996. "Cohort Effects on the Gender Wage Gape in Danmark," Papers 96-05, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Murat Genc, 2017. "Gender, Ethnicity, and Wages in New Zealand," EcoMod2017 10338, EcoMod.
    2. David Fergusson & Sheree J. Gibb, 2009. "Sources of the Gender Wage Gap in a New Zealand Birth Cohort," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 12(3), pages 281-298.
    3. Nayni Gupta, 2015. "Gender Wage Gap in the Last Ten Years: A Case Study of India," Working Papers id:6922, eSocialSciences.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Iga Magda & Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2019. "Gender wage gap in the workplace: Does the age of the firm matter?," IBS Working Papers 01/2019, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    2. Pilar González & Maria Clementina Santos & Luís Delfim Santos, 2005. "The Gender Wage Gap in Portugal: Recent Evolution and Decomposition," CEF.UP Working Papers 0505, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    3. Anja Heinze & Elke Wolf, 2010. "The intra-firm gender wage gap: a new view on wage differentials based on linked employer–employee data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 851-879, June.
    4. Kaya, Ezgi, 2019. "Gender wage gap across the quantiles:What is the role of firm segregation?," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2019/7, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    5. Kaya Ezgi, 2021. "Gender wage gap across the distribution: What is the role of within- and between-firm effects?," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, January.
    6. Michael Baker & Nicole Fortin, 2000. "Comparable Worth Comes to the Private Sector: The Case of Ontario," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0266, Econometric Society.
    7. Magda, Iga & Salach, Katarzyna, 2019. "Gender Pay Gap Patterns in Domestic and Foreign-Owned Firms," IZA Discussion Papers 12453, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Iga Magda & Katarzyna Sałach, 2021. "Gender pay gaps in domestic and foreign-owned firms," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 2237-2263, October.
    9. Iga Magda & Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2018. "Do female managers help to lower within-firm gender pay gaps? Public institutions vs. private enterprises," IBS Working Papers 08/2018, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    10. Mohsen Javdani & Andrew McGee, 2019. "Moving Up or Falling Behind? Gender, Promotions, and Wages in Canada," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 189-228, April.
    11. Nicole M. Fortin & Michael Huberman, 2002. "Occupational Gender Segregation and Women's Wages in Canada: An Historical Perspective," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 28(s1), pages 11-39, May.
    12. Clive Belfield, 2005. "Workforce gender effects on firm performance and workers' pay: evidence for the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(8), pages 885-891.
    13. José Vieira & Ana Cardoso & Miguel Portela, 2005. "Gender segregation and the wage gap in Portugal: an analysis at the establishment level," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 3(2), pages 145-168, August.
    14. Mohsen Javdani, 2015. "Glass ceilings or glass doors? The role of firms in male‐female wage disparities," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(2), pages 529-560, May.
    15. Khorana, Sangeeta & Webster, Allan, 2023. "Too few women at the top of firms: Foreign ownership, gender segregation and cultural causes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1276, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Heinze, Anja, 2009. "Earnings of Men and Women in Firms with a Female Dominated Workforce: What Drives the Impact of Sex Segregation on Wages?," ZEW Discussion Papers 09-012, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Havet, Nathalie, 2004. "Écarts salariaux et disparités professionnelles entre sexes : développements théoriques et validité empirique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 80(1), pages 5-39, Mars.
    18. Meng, Xin, 2004. "Gender earnings gap: the role of firm specific effects," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 555-573, October.
    19. Marie Drolet, 2002. "Can the Workplace Explain Canadian Gender Pay Differentials?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 28(s1), pages 41-63, May.
    20. Heinze, Anja, 2010. "Beyond the mean gender wage gap: Decomposition of differences in wage distributions using quantile regression," ZEW Discussion Papers 10-043, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:38:y:2004:i:1:p:101-118. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RNZP20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.