Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/150902 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 357
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
The study analyses the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions in Germany based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2008. It focuses in particular on gender segregation in the labor market, that is, on the unequal distribution of women and men across different occupations and on the effects of this inequality on earnings levels and gender wage differentials in management positions. Our paper is, to our knowledge, the first in Germany to use time-constant unobserved heterogeneity and gender-specific promotion probabilities to estimate wages and wage differentials for persons in managerial positions. The results of the fixed effects model show that working in a more "female" job, as opposed to a more "male" job, affects only women's wages negatively. This result remains stable after controlling for human capital endowments and other effects. Mechanisms of the devaluation of jobs not primarily held by men also negatively affect pay in management positions (evaluative discrimination) and are even more severe for women (allocative discrimination). However, the effect is notlinear; the wage penalties for women occur only in "integrated" (more equally male/female) jobs as opposed to typicallymale jobs, and not in typically female jobs. Thedevaluation of occupations that are not primarily held by men becomes even more evident when promotion probabilities are taken into account. An Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition of the wage differential between men and women in management positions shows that the full model explains 65 percent of the gender pay gap. In other words: Thirty-five percent remain unexplained; this portion reflects, for example, time-varying social and cultural conditions, such as discriminatory policies and practices in the labor market.
Subjects: 
Gender pay gap
managerial positions
gender segregation
glass-ceiling effects
Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition
fixed effects
selection bias
JEL: 
J31
J16
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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