The objective of this research is to investigate if gender employment gap can shed some light on the gender wage gap and to develop a web-based developmental tool to tackle gender wage inequality in Macedonia.
Macedonian labor market is characterized by relatively large gender employment inequality, coupled with considerable gender pay inequality. These inequalities are magnified at lower education levels. The objective of this research is to investigate if gender employment gap can shed some light on the gender wage gap. In particular, low-to-medium skilled women in Macedonia may be affecting the gender wage gap due to their labor inactivity owing to child-raising, being unpaid family worker, high reservation wage and remittance receiving from the male migrant. We propose to explore this view by estimating selection-corrected and adjusted-for-characteristics gender wage gaps for different skill levels in Macedonia. The empirical approach will recuperate the counterfactual wage distribution that would prevail had the selection into work been fully random. As an innovative approach to this issue, we will use alternative imputation techniques which do not require assumptions on the actual level of missing wages, as typically required in the matching approach, nor they require arbitrary exclusion restrictions raised in two-stage Heckman sample-selection models. At the policy level, the issue gained importance and the government responded with establishing Equal Opportunities Committees both at national and local level, but the problem of gender (wage and employment) discrimination has not been resolved. Our investigation may shed new light on the issue and help in i) devising fuller Strategy for equal employment opportunities; and, more importantly, ii) establishing the EdPlaCo-MK as a web-tool serving as a standard helping employers (public and private) to develop best practice for fair employment and compensation.
Provider: Global Development Network and the Government of Japan
Duration: 2013-2015 (two years)
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Article in the Journal of Labor Research
Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women
