Gender Wage Discrimination In Azerbaijan

Discrimination against females is one of the most discussed topics in economic literature.Discrimination shows itself in different stages of the life in various levels from the household to economic sectors.Over the past few years,some serious actions have been taken and several resolutions were accepted by international organizations and countries.However,only a few countries managed to achieve high level of gender equality.In the vast majority of the world,women are discriminated while they are being paid according to their job position which is called "wage discrimination".Specially,this issue is being discussed globally and even some countries started implementing strict policies in order to lift wage discrimination and ensure "equal pay right" of females in workplace.However,in some countries of Europe,this problem remains still immutable or improvements are very negligible.In this thesis,I investigate wage discrimination against females in Azerbaijan labor market.Azerbaijan has witnessed dramatic economic growth over the last 15 years.Despite increasing level of female participation in labor market,wage gap still significant and became greater alongside with rising national wage.This issue has never been in the center of government seriously.Lacks of empirical studies also prove inattentiveness toward this problem.Using Ordinary Least Squares(OLS)and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition methods I examined household survey dataset for case of Azerbaijan,more clearly capital Baku.Baku is the main economic center of Azerbaijan and hosting nearly half of population.Naturally,the essential part of labor force and companies also accumulated in Baku.Therefore,it is the best location to conduct individual survey and draw plausible conclusions.We find that there is a wage discrimination against women in Azerbaijan.Furthermore,it became clear that education attainment significantly affects gender wage gap and females do not face wage discrimination as their education level increases.Finally,results show that married females are more discriminated in Azerbaijan.