Linnéusuniversity

Review  of  past  and  recent  work  on  gender  wage  gap  between  the  Public  -­‐  Private  Sector  

   

Alen Kuralić & Sara Rančigaj    

2013-10-18

Examinator:  Dominique  Anxo  

i

“But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You're looking at a guy who sat down with

Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues”. “George H. W. Bush”

Abstract The gap between male and female, so called “gender wage gap”, portrays persistent gender inequalities that exist on the labor market. In spite of more than thirty years of equal pay legislation, gap remains remarkably resilient across all continents. The former is extended as a framework for Public and Private sector differences. This short essay contributes with general overview of past and recently conducted work on the subject. However, after reviewing the some of the presented results, we find that legalization and higher return of schooling has improved woman situation on wage ladder.

Table of Content

Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i  

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1  

Theoretical framework ............................................................................................................... 2  

Gender wage gap .................................................................................................................... 2  

Empirical Evidence .................................................................................................................... 4  

Male Female decomposition ................................................................................................... 4  

Human Capital differences ..................................................................................................... 6  

Public - Private ....................................................................................................................... 7  

Descriptive results ...................................................................................................................... 8  

Public – Private Sector ........................................................................................................... 8  

Gender wage gap .................................................................................................................. 10  

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 13  

References ................................................................................................................................ 14  

List of Figure ............................................................................................................................ 16  

List of Table ............................................................................................................................. 17  

Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 18  

1

Introduction

he gap between male and female, so called “gender wage gap”, portrays

persistent gender inequalities that exist on the labor market. In spite of more than

thirty years of equal pay legislation, gap remains remarkably resilient across all

continents. The recent advances in labor economic literature and the methodology for

measuring the gender pay gap only appears to underline the persistence of the disparity

between women and men’s pay. The European Member States female earnings on average are

estimated to be around 18% less per hour than male in 2012 European Commision (2013).

This disparity repeats itself across monthly and annual earnings, and subsequently into

lifetime earnings and pension entitlements, and throughout the sectors e.g. Gonzalez &

Whatts (1995), Weichselbaumer & Ember (2005), Carlsson & Rooth (2007), Laura & Moral-

Benito (2012) has down some extensive work on the prior. The wide ranging studies of

adjusted pay gap by Weichselbaumer & Ember (2005) have also found that, from the 1960 to

1990, raw wage differentials globally have dropped substantially from around 65 to 30

percent. Moreover, remarkable fact is that female earnings sporadically changed in last

decade in some western countries and few percentages of the females - which they are, have

ended up in upper wage ladder.

Nevertheless, this short essay has its start point in outlining already existing theoretical and

methodological literature on gender wage gap. Since the roots of public–private differences

originates in gender wage gap. The former will be extended as a framework for Public and

Private sector differences. The paper also provides a somewhat modest but comprehensive

picture of different dimensions in methods used to build on already existing methodology.

This enables the studies of gender inequality and its impact within and between sectors.

However to achieve these objectives, graphical figures and tables are collected from the ONS

- office of national statistics and some other sources for overawing the effects in gender wage

gap. Further, not only that paper considers problems as unequal pay and differences in the

T

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distribution of net wage between men and women the sectoral level of the gender segregation

in the labor market will be addressed in last part of the same section. Therefore, a straight

forward interpretation of results is applied in section descriptive results.

Theoretical framework

Gender wage gap

To see how the wage gap might have developed on labor market through time we start with

deeper meaning, in sense of major events, we take brief peek at history. Since industrial

technologic development, the changes in educational system and overall improvement, the

ability of labor force have been more or less subjected to these modifications. Where, women

are much more likely to be weakest link in embracing characteristics of frequent demand

changes in labor market. The discontinuities as maternal leave, less investment in human

capital, considerable devoted time to domestic work are several constrains for ability progress

Blau & Kahn (1996). Hence, the slow female developments in labor market and resilience of

wage pay merger between genders.

To continue on previous reasoning of background ladder, but with focus shifted on economic

literature and research. The simplest of conducting the measurement between male and female

pay whether hourly, weekly, or monthly is to take average difference between men’s and

women’s earnings and compare them to each other. Thus the comparison of average wage is

of little usage because men and women tend to range differently in personal characteristics for

many of the factors that affect earning. The gender pay gap is both a simple and complex

matter. The labor-economic literature interest in gender wage differentials has been manly

focused on analysis in identifying the factors of the different wage rates received by women

and men. Theoretically the gender wage gap can be classified in to supply-side and demand-

side theories. The supply–side theory mainly consists of human capital investment and its

differences between male and female, i.e., in the past men invested more in education than

woman (given that man do not spend time in domestic-work) and received higher return in

form of a higher wage. While women were less educated or they studied in fields that usually

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gives lower return in wage. While on the other side of intersection, that is, demand-side of the

wage gap mainly highlights different conditions that might arise between women and men in

the labor market. These differences might arise doe to social norms, social networks or in

form of several types of discrimination Becker (1994). The human capital theory suggests that

people are compensated in the work place based on their ability and skills Borjas (2000).

However, there is still deliberation over whether any of the wage gaps is due to

discrimination as well as over the extent to which women and men are forced to make certain

choices due to social pressure. For example, the differences in start of working age, part-time

work and time away from the labor market play significant role in female’s personal wage

structures.

Though, that earlier studies have shown substantial adjustments in gender pay. Taking in to

account that certain occupations might be preferred by women than others, would certainly

lead to a difference in the overall average pay of men and women in different sectors

Robinson (1998). In spite of personal, gender, social or in firm characteristics the variances in

gender wage gap also can substantially differ between the regions and sectors, e.g.

Weichselbaumer & Ember (2005). Similarly the wage determination and working conditions

of employment can also differ between countries. The usual agreement in employing the

workers in public sector is that the employees cannot be laid off just for any reason, except in

cases of violation of contract or misconduct. The life time employment and security of having

the job in public sector is standardized in many countries. However, the wage determination

of public sector relative to private sector differs in influence, whether later is affected by

market rules wage setting. In general a number of institutional, political and economic factors

contribute to the determination of public/private sector wages. In private sector employers

decide about employment and work force according to principle of maximizing profit. The

government employs workers to achieve different goals or purpose e.g. “maximizing votes,

social welfare etc.”, which significantly differs from profit maximizing goals in the private

sector. It´s also well known, that in the year of held election most countries demand for public

employees increases as well as government increases spending in public sector Reder (1975).

But during the crisis this became a big problem in countries like Spain, Greece and Italy. The

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deficit in public debt came to the critical point leading to large layoffs and wage reductions.

For example in Spain the number of public workers was reduced almost by 12% and they

have reduced wages for 5% and 7% in 2012 in average Anton & De Bustillo (2013). The

reduction in public incomes are small in contrast to declining in economic growth during

already blown up crises, i.e., the governments have to reduce mass of the public wages to

reduce indebtedness.

The inclusion of the labor unions is crucial to the existence of a wage premium. The main

difference between public and private sector is the public sectors existence of wage premium.

There are several reasons for public wage premium: first, public sector usually does not have

any competition on the market of public services. Then again there can be some exceptions

like private education and medical services. Secondly, a government with pay premium tends

to reduce wage gap between genders. Thirdly, a highly educated people favor employment in

some occupations like education and medical services. Public sector usually has bigger power

for bargaining about wages and working conditions, doe to belonging rate of unions. This is

also concluded by economist in several European countries e.g. Gonzalo Fernández-de-

Córdoba (2012), Anton & De Bustillo (2013) Laura & Moral-Benito (2012). Non-

discriminatory pay can exist alongside a gender pay gap as long as women and men are not

evenly distributed across high and low paying sectors and occupations is one of the Robinson

(1998) assumptions.

Empirical Evidence

Male Female decomposition

In this part of the essay we are to present a short overview of measurement methods and its

expansions. We start with the basic clarification of gender comparison and later between

sectors. We will show and give explanation of selected basics of how these methods are

conducted. However, to a large degree various explanations will be exclude and certain

widening of regression routines, i.e., we won´t go in to detailed of mathematical derivations in

the wage gap on all methods only most essential. The reasons for excluding the large part of

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equations are: First, the derivations of equations that are typically included in regressions to

explain the single methodology are simple to profound. Second, by including extensive

methods content, we would simple lose focus of the subject.

With that being said, there are several ways of measuring the differences in gender wage gap.

If we assume for the moment, that two workers female and male are employed for full-time

and that both workers generate earnings according the hours devoted to work all ells equal

“ceteris paribus”. Then taking the averages or median of those earnings for each gender group

and compering them against one another, leading to observations of possible fluctuations in

earnings. Where at the first glance this types of measures is certainly comparable with each-

other. However, obviously this modest association is nowhere near the existing literature on

methodological approach of gender wage differences, but is our first vary simple comparison.

The role of women in economic growth and the effect of development were investigated by

Boserup (1970). Thus during that period it was assumed that household compounded their

earnings and consumption in to one. The individual differences in earnings between male and

female was first conducted by Mincer (1985) “earnings function” and was constructed as

following:

𝑙𝑛𝑊 = 𝐹(𝑠ℎ𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔  𝑖𝑛  𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 + 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟  𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙  𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑒𝑠)  

log  𝑦! =  𝛼 + 𝑟𝑠! + 𝛽𝐸𝑋𝑃! +  𝛾𝑋! + 𝑢!

Where the yi= earnings for individual i, Si = years of schooling for individual i, EXPi = years

of experience for individual i = AGEi – si – 6, and X= control variable such as gender, region

ect, ui as error term or residual. The first or at least one of the first more complex

methodologies of gender wage dispersion was combined out of the two ideas. The human

capital theory, that was established by Mincer & Polachek (1974) and second by Becker

(1971) the discrimination theory. Where the former theory of gender wage gap differences

explaines: “that a human-capital stock is accumulated by individuals and the difference lays in

endowment by individual characteristics” Mincer & Polachek (1974).

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Human Capital differences Similarly, as the characteristics of men and women in the labor market differ with respect to

the length of work experience, the level of education, skills, occupational status and sector of

employment are factors that in absence for better word they demanded for higher complexities

of regressions. These features are included in Oaxaca-Blinder (1973) methodology called

“decomposition technique”. The regression technique was developed by combining both

previous methods. Where, both human-capital differences and discrimination are decomposed

in two effects. Indeed they are, as shown below:

Oaxaca and Binder’s (1973) decomposition of the wage equation for men and women

𝑙𝑛 𝑤 ! = 𝑎! + 𝛽! + 𝑥! (1)

𝑙𝑛 𝑤 ! = 𝑎! + 𝛽! + 𝑥! (2)

In the first equation average wage for female is denoted as 𝑤f, index f is for female, followed

by the intercept 𝑎f and average observed characteristics of women as a 𝑥!. Second equation

it is exactly the same with the small difference in index for male.

𝑙𝑛𝑤! − 𝑙𝑛𝑤! = 𝛽! 𝑥! − 𝑥! + 𝑥! 𝛽! − 𝛽! (3)

(i) (ii)

In equation number three the first term on the right hand side denoted (i) represent the

explained part: the differences between men and women and the individual characteristics.

The second term denoted (ii) gives the unexplained part or differences in coefficient estimates

or what we sometime use to explain as a discrimination factor.

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Since decomposition of Oaxaca and Blinder’s (1973) equation, the more recent literature on

gender wage gap has added additional factors. One of these additional features is wage

structure, which is not included in equation of Oaxaca and Blinder (1973). But that has been

shown to be very important component, particularly as collective bargaining structure. The

economist Blau & Kahn (1996) argued that “to understand changes in gender pay gap fully, it

would also be fruitful to examine the impact of change in wage structure”. They also find that

centralized bargaining increases gender wage gap reduction.

Public - Private To compare the public sector and the private sector gender pay is not a straightforward task.

As we already briefly mentioned these two sectors differ in type of jobs and the characteristics

of employees within them. A number of different results can be derived depending on the

methodology that is used to calculate pay differences. We already have lined up main basic

structure of methodology for pay differential that are used to conduct the study between

governmental and non-governmental sector. Together with main methodologies, in general

we outline also the aspects that might contribute in affecting the measurement between public

and private sector.

One such type of measure is adjusting the data to take in to the account productivity or

marginal product of men and women. For instance, having the year of education or some

other similar variable and including it as proxy for the regression analysis. However, include

work related characteristics in regression does not change the measured wage gap, but the size

of the gap or changes over time might be accounted for. Thus, years of education in relation to

productivity and marginal product as well years of experience might be respectively affected

Mincer and Polachek (1974). Consequently because of differences in men’s and women’s

average pay, including the personal characteristics of measurable productivity, the overall

male/female wage gap will be influenced by the general level of wage structure in an

individual country Blau and Kahn, (1996). It has been also suggested that occupations that are

female dominated pay rather lower wages compared to their counter part of male-dominated

ones. In other words females as minority in male-dominated occupations are paid equally as

males. This is described by Bergamann (1974) as a crowding effect.

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The discrimination theory pursues to explain whether employers choose not to employ

women in certain jobs. For example, if there is discrimination in hiring into certain

occupations, the determination of a wage gap will depend on the pay agreement for the

comparison of male and female pay. However the main measurements of the gap can be sum

up as: a) the average hourly wages comparing female average as a percentage of male average

hourly wages between sectors. b) The between countries average hourly wages, and sectoral

differences c) There diversity in the female percentages for average monthly wages between

sectors within and between countries. The usage of different approaches to conduct the

studies on wage disparities led to a large variety in final results.

Descriptive  results  

Public  –  Private  Sector  

The structure of appendix is used as guideline of this section i.e. following the figures from

number one to two and so on. In many OECD countries a lot of people are employed in a

large share in public sector. In France, Great Britain and Italy low skilled public sector

workers are paid more than low skilled workers in private sector. But it seems to be opposite

for high skilled workers (Lucifora & Meurs, 2006).

In year 2011 in UK worked 18 % employees in public sector (full-time 9.2 %, part-time 36.3

%) and in private sector 26.8 % (full – time 18.4 %, part – time 42.8 %). About 65 % women

work in public sector, they work especially in education and local government. In 2012 in

France was 35% in Germany, Greece and Italy 30% employed of all workers in public sector.

Interpreting the result of the Figure 1 - we can observe that employees experience a stepper

increase in annual earnings for the early working-age in both the public sector and the private

sector. At immediate start of youth employment occupation differences are significant in

choice of a sectoral employment. This is due to structural characteristics in objectives, as we

mention in previous section that private enterprises pursues to maximizing profit.

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Additionally we see that younger people between 16 – 35 ages earns in average 2£ more in

the public sector, but we have seen before, there is more jobs in the private sector for younger

people. For workers between 35 – 50 years old is earning similar between public and private

sector. More important is that people between 50 – 64 years earn on average 2£ more in the

public sector as in private sector. The earning seams to stagnate for those that are 30-50 of

age, average mean of hourly earnings seams to peak in the early forties in both sectors. The

earning over the life cycle theory suggests diminishing returns to earnings in later part of life,

which can be observed here as decline with starting point at around fifty years. The notable

difference is that decline happens earlier in the private sector than in the public sector. It is

reasonable to assume that higher wage of public sector is main occasion to early leave in

private sector given that worker earns two thousand pounds more per year in public sector at

55 of age.

The following - figure 2 – has age as a proxy for the experience. This is expressed in percent

change of age/experience and as well as distributed between sectors. The presumable outcome

that we can expect, those that are older earn more than young i.e. older people have more

experience, and thus higher return earning. Indeed that is what we find by observing left and

right part of the graph. The public sector generally consists of an older workforce and account

approximately for 5% of employees. Around 45% of public sector workers are aged 35 to 49

compared to 15% of employees in the private sector aged 16 to 24 and around 38% of private

sector workers that are in middle age. The reasons behind this simply that younger people

tend to change job more frequently in early part of career life, while older seek more security.

Some reasons might be due to the better bargaining power of the unions and they have more

rights and higher wages.

Another characteristic which determine wages, is the level of qualifications of the employee.

In figure 3 the pay differences by qualifications levels we see that up to the higher

qualification level on average public-sector employees earn more than the private sector.

Employees with higher level of qualifications earn more, than employees with lower level of

qualifications when we consider public sector that has a higher qualified workforce than the

private sector. A higher qualified workforce would, on average, receive higher pay than a less

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qualified workforce. The other factors can explain these differences than the qualifications,

for example, the types of occupations which we explained earlier. The similar case is

Australian public-private wage gap table eight, where certain measures are excluded as the

part time and overtime payments. There, we can perceive shorter period of time over

fluctuation in sectoral dissimilarities, but is more recent and stretches between 1994 -2012.

For the Australia persistency is similar as in Europe. Between 1994 and 2012, the gender

wage gap remained within a range of 11 and 21 percent. In November 1994, the gender pay

gap between sectors was around 10%. The closest number in closing the gap that we could

observe was in November in 2003 with mare 4 percent in difference.

Another important thing is when comparing the pay gap between two sectors as a pay

distribution of employees is skill characteristic. To illustrate this, the table 1 tabulates a

random selection of people which work in the public and private sector and are divided by

skill endowments. The obvious fact in dissimilarity is that those that possess middle and high

skill tend to work in public sector. Further, in charts 5 and 6 it is highlight the proportion of

full-time women and men and earnings distribution. The analysis of the table’s shows clear

evidence that females is more modestly spread over the earnings both in public and private

sector. But then again, as in previous observations they are placed in lower part of the wage

distribution ladder respectively. The difference is also larger in the private then it public

sector. Those as we earlier communicated about martial leave and absence from the job being

the possible factors of the gender gap. Here it confirmed in shape of part time work as an

alternative, where woman are willing to take the jobs that are less skilled and lower in wage.

Gender  wage  gap  

Nevertheless, to observe how the gender wage gap is distributed in UK labor market across

twenty different occupations we take a peek at figure nine. The most observable difference is

in occupations that are employed by managers, chief executives, drives and sales personal

where women earn 25 -33 % less than males. The low-wage jobs as drivers and sales persons

seem to be in general male dominated, and the 0.5 % portion is shared by females. For the

higher educated occupations that number increases between 25-45 percent, surprisingly it is

here that we find the largest gap between male and female for UK. Since, the number of

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females that share the profession of manager increases to 45 percent, we would expect slow-

down in wage gap. However, essentially the female dominated jobs shape the wage gap in

favor of females for the UK labor market. In contradiction to this, the gender wage gap seems

to be bigger in Australia as it is shown in Figure 4 for public sector, with disadvantage for

women. As we have mentioned before the reason or reasons for this gap could be absence in

education i.e. might be doe to simple reason that women invest less money in education than

men, also men can be more motivated and efficient, as well as possibility that maybe men

engage in work that is more demanding and consists with heavy responsibilities. The second

reason is that women usually interrupt they career because of maternity leave and they take

care of the family and that decreases their earnings. As is it is seen, in year 1994 we could

observe bigger wage gap in gender, which has decreased (20 percentage points) in 10 years,

but it has also developed in to even higher from 2006 to 2012 (one of the implications to this

could be recent recession). The gap in public sector is not so large, because we mentioned

before - but we only can assume -, because of available data that we have for Australia where

the share of public sector is 16,4 % of total jobs it seems that government reduces wage gaps

between gender with wage premium and smaller wage gap in public sector, it visibly

decreases wage gap in all sectors.

This confirms the theory of Bergmann (1974) that occupations that are female dominated pay

rather lower wages compared to their counter part of male-dominated ones, also that

occupations with lower rate of female employees seem to have discriminatory impact. To get

broader comprehension how the female wage gap as percentage of males has developed over

the years we use figure 6 for the US labor market as support. The gender earnings ratio graph

shows that a woman would earn roughly 62 percent of male wage in 1955. However in 2010

the ratio increased to around 75 percent of male earnings. The overall gender wage

inequalities overtime shows steady convergence. But then again the positive narrowing of the

wage gap that stretches over 55 years and gets 13 % closer to the male wage, can’t be that

exacting. The differences between EU-27 countries can be observed in figure 7 which

overviews the changes in gender gap in average gross hourly earnings. The substantial

differences are notable, for example Estonia´s pay gap stand out for itself with almost 31

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percent, while Italy-Portugal are ranging less than 10% and Luxemburg, Latvia, Netherlands

Finland are around 20 percent. The average wage gap ranges about 17.5 percent across OECD

27 countries. Beside that a lot of women in public sector earn less than £ 600 per week and

which is significant gap between man and women, man earn a lot more up to £ 1000 per

week. Those we can compare and see that in UK it is not a big difference between public and

private sector, because a significant part of women earns less than £ 400 per week and also we

have a big difference between women and men that earn £ 1000 per week (see Figure 7 and

8).

For example, women that are low-wage takers are better off to work in the public sector, but

on other hand for the men it is better to work in private sector, if they are high educated

because they will get higher wages. In general, institutional differences in wage regulation

seem to play an important role: in Italian and French labor market sectors, as well as

collective bargaining and union presence contributes to higher wages for public sector

employees which explains the reason behind the largest part of the pay gap. The opposite

applies in Great Britain, decentralization in wage setting and higher employer discretion in

wage setting contribute to increase pay dispersion as well as public – private wage

differences. (Lucifora & Meurs, 2006).

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Conclusion

In this short essay we covered gender wage gap and public-private wage differentials out of

theoretical and methodology perspectives in labor economics. Some previous work has found

positive evidence between male/female pay in private-public sector. While the others argue

that a construction and gathered data used in research might be slightly misleading.

Throughout the overview of the extensive literature and data analyses of different authors

focused us to one conclusion. That wage gap exists in all sectoral dimensions and also in all

countries over the globe. Subsequently when taking in to the account crowding effect and

labor-union the pay gap between governmental and non-governmental segment, the females

seem to be better off by working in public segment. Nevertheless their average earning is still

to a certain degree lower than for men.

What more we observe is that even when gender pay by occupation is clear, in comparing

comparable jobs, there tend to remain some differentials in measurement. The differences in

the average pay of men and women in the same occupation can arise from a number of

causes. Some may result from the use of different measures of pay. Women typically work

fewer hours than men and they usually do less overtime hours than men. Average monthly or

weekly earnings may therefore differ because men work more or different hours than women.

This might affect average hourly earnings, still to a lesser degree, then spread over both

normal and overtime hours.

According to gathered data/figures of our choice, the wage gap in public sector remains

resilient in its nature to change in closing the wage gap. The Empirical evidence shows us that

the public sector is in a lot of cases (like Spain, France, Italy) a fair employer reducing both

pay differences by gender and compressing pay dispersion with according to the private

sector. On the other hand we saw that the public sector pays more, with the wage premium to

low skilled labor while high skilled workers in public sector suffers penalty.

14

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Wage Gap. 480-509.

List  of  Figure  Figure 1. Mean hourly earnings by age 16-64 in the public and private sector (2011), UK .... 18  

Figure 2. Percentage of workers by age 16-64 in the public and private sector (2011), UK ... 19  

Figure 3. Average public/private sector pay gap by qualification (2011), UK ........................ 19  

Figure 4. Gender pay gap by sector, 1994 to 2012 in Australia ............................................... 20  

Figure 5. Gender composition and gender pay gap .................................................................. 21  

Figure 6. The Gender Earnings Ratio, 1995-2010, Full-Time Workers U.S. .......................... 22  

Figure 7. Changes in the female wage ratio over countries 2008 EU 27 ................................. 22  

17

List  of  Table  Table 1. Percentage of employees by skill level in the public sector and the private sector,

April 2011, UK ......................................................................................................................... 23  

Table 2. Some differences between public and private sector in different countries ............... 23  

18

Appendix  

Figure 1. Mean hourly earnings by age 16-64 in the public and private sector (2011), UK

Source: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-

survey-of-hours-and-earnings/index.html

0.00  2.00  4.00  6.00  8.00  10.00  12.00  14.00  16.00  18.00  20.00  

0   10   20   30   40   50   60   70  

Public  sector  

Private  sector  

Age  

Earning £/ hour

19

Figure 2. Percentage of workers by age 16-64 in the public and private sector (2011), UK

Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) - Office for National Statistics -

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/public-and-private-sector-earnings/november-2012/rpt-

public-private-pay.html?format=print

Figure 3. Average public/private sector pay gap by qualification (2011), UK

Source: ONS Labor Force Survey - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/public-and-private-sector-

earnings/november-2012/rpt-public-private-pay.html?format=print

0.00  

0.50  

1.00  

1.50  

2.00  

2.50  

3.00  

3.50  

4.00  

16  18  20  22  24  26  28  30  32  34  36  38  40  42  44  46  48  50  52  54  56  58  60  62  64  

Public  sector  

Private  sector  

-­‐6.0  

-­‐4.0  

-­‐2.0  

0.0  

2.0  

4.0  

6.0  

8.0  

10.0  

Degree  or  equivalent  

Higher  educaLon  

A  Level  or  equivalent  

GCSE  or  equivalent  

Other   None  

Pay  gap  

20

Figure 4. Gender pay gap by sector, 1994 to 2012 in Australia

Source:http://parliamentflagpost.blogspot.se/2013/03/women-in-australian-workforce 2013.html

Figure 5. Private sector distribution of gross weekly earnings for full – time employees in 2011

21

Figure 6. Public sector distribution of gross weekly earnings for full – time employees in 2011

Figure 7. Gender composition and gender pay gap

Source: http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/tag/occupations/.

22

Figure 8. The Gender Earnings Ratio, 1995-2010, Full-Time Workers U.S.

Source: http://www.iwpr.org/blog/2011/04/07/visualizing-the-gender-wage-gap/

Figure 9. Changes in the female wage ratio over countries 2008 EU 27

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EU_27_Gender_Pay_Gap.001.png

23

Table 1. Percentage of employees by skill level in the public sector and the private sector, April 2011, UK

                                         

Skill-level Public sector Private sector                        High skill 30 26                        

Upper middle 29 23                        Lower middle 32 37                        

Low skill 9 14                        Source:  ONS  Annual  Survey  of  Hours  and  Earnings  based  on  the  Standard  Occupational  Classification  (Soc.  2000)  

Table 2 Some differences between public and private sector in different countries

Wage gap

between public

and private sector

Penalty or

premium

Higher wages

has penalties,

lower wages

has premium

Did Great

recession

make

consequences

on wages in

public

sector?

Wage gap

between gender

Spain Yes Penalty and

premium

Low skilled

works get

premium, high

educated

suffer penalty

Yes, they

downsized

the workers

Females get

premium to

decline a gap

24

Italy Yes, pay gap is

smaller because

pay formation is

more regulated

Penalty and

premium

Low skilled

workers get

premium, high

educated

suffer penalty

They

downsized

the workers

in public

sector.

Females get better

paid in public

sector and males

are better paid in

private sector

Netherlands Yes, but on

opposite to the

other countries is

that private sector

wages are higher

form public sector

wages from year

1980.

Premium get

women with

lower

education in

public sector in

average from

1980 there´s

not premium in

public sector

but they have

penalties

Lower or

medium

skilled get

premium,

highly

educated get

penalties.

They froze

current

wages and

they didn´t

bargain about

new

collective

agreement.

In public sector is

larger amount of

women and it is a

difference for

women, because

the wage gap is

bigger between

public and private

sector for them

France Yes, pay gap is

smaller because

pay formation is

more regulated

Penalty and

premium

Low skilled

works get

premium, high

educated

suffer penalty

They

downsized

the workers

in public

sector.

Females get better

paid in public

sector and males

are better paid in

private sector

UK Yes Penalty and

premium

Low skilled

works get

premium, high

educated

suffer penalty

Wages fell

down in

March 2009

for 7 percent

points

Females get better

paid in public

sector and males

are better paid in

private sector

Source: (Anton & De Bustillo, 2013), (Lucifora & Meurs, 2006), Eurostat 2012, (Berkhout

Ernest, 2012)