英语论文网

r, non-linearly. I also find that being a member of the workplace union has a positive effect on the earnings and equality which can be explained by the importance of employee representation. As well, there is more preference for the part-time employment among the females which greatly contributes to gender segregation and, thus, gender wage gap. Finally, the number of hours worked reflects the important issue analysed above. Hours allocated to labour market clearly benefits males and therefore, their earnings are relatively higher. Women tend to spend much less time in the labour market due to household commitments.

On the other hand, all of the reported results should be treated with extremely great caution. There are numerous limitations in the empirical procedure in this study. Individual productivity characteristics seem to explain the gender pay gap well in theory, however, the statistical significance of almost all reported estimates is very low. The reason for this is likely to be the imperfect sample design as well as errors in the construction of variables. Proxy variables should be avoided if possible. Another limitation is that I estimated weekly wages in order to escape division by average number of hours worked, however, this raises a challenge of comparing my results to other studies where hourly wages are calculated. Finally, any work with large-scale microeconomic data at an undergraduate level is ambitious. Having limited econometric knowledge such estimation can be performed to a very limited extent.

Recommendations for further research

This paper is a mere initiation of research in the area of labour market discrimination. To perform an excellent Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition it is important to collect previous work history of the respondent. This can be done with the data given in the BHPS records but can be a lengthy procedure. This way the gender wage gap components could also be estimated for more recent years. In addition, such decompositions should be performed with larger and more representative samples. It is also possible to look at how certain changes in legislation and policy have an effect on the pay differential after those policies are adopted. As evidence shows, females are still largely underpaid and this is a prevailing issue that researchers should address and find more credible ways to explain the existing inequality.

Policy Implications

The topic of gender pay equality and labour market discrimination has been debated among the EU member states for many years. According to the executive summary from the report on ‘Addressing the gender pay gap’ (Eurofound, 2010), one of the aims of the 2003 European Employment Strategy was ‘to achieve by 2010 a substantial reduction in the gender pay gap in each Member State.’ In 2006, the European Commission issued a Communication on gender equality, ‘A Roadmap for equality between women and men 2006–2010’, followed in 2007 by a Communication on ‘Tackling the pay gap between women and men’. It is thus evident that there have been strong initiatives to fight the gender income inequality since 2003. The UK is no exception either. There have been many government schemes as well as equal opportunities programmes in the private sector to improve gender equality and give women an incentive to invest more in their human capital. However, the gender wage differential in the UK is approaching the 20