The Long Way to Gender Equality: Gender Pay Differences in Germany, 1871-2021

This paper provides the first time series of the gender earnings ratio for the full-time employed workforce in Germany since the 1870s and compares Germany's path with the Swedish and U.S. cases. The industrialization period yielded slow advances in economic gender relations due to women's delayed inclusion in the industrial workforce. The first half of the 20th century exhibited a marked leap. In Germany, the gender earnings ratio increased from 47% in 1913 to 58% in 1937. Similar increases are visible in Sweden and the United States. In all three countries, the interplay between increased women's education and increased returns to education due to the expanding white-collar sector fueled pay convergence. Yet in Germany, women's educational catch-up was slowed due to the dominance of on-the-job vocational training. German women's migration from low-paid agricultural work to higher-paid white-collar jobs was predominantly increasing the gender pay ratio. The postwar period brought diverging developments between Germany, Sweden and the United States due to different economic conditions and policy action.