Occupational Gender Segregation And Gender Wage Gap

Gender equality and women’s overall development are important indicators of social civilization and progress.Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the Party and the state have attached great importance to the development of women and constantly improved the working mechanism for women.Certain achievements have been made in women’s cause and the development of equality between men and women.However,unbalanced and inadequate development of women remains a prominent problem.To this end,the Outline for Women’s Development in China(2021-2030)issued by the state council in September 2021 points out that efforts should be made to eliminate gender discrimination in employment in the economic field,improve the employment structure of women,gradually eliminate occupational gender segregation and narrow the income gap between men and women.Gender income gap and occupational gender segregation are important indicators reflecting the degree of equality between men and women in the economic field,and occupational gender segregation is also an important factor affecting gender income gap,which is also a hot topic in academic labor market research.Therefore,the study of occupational gender segregation and gender income gap is helpful to explore its changing trend and influencing factors,and provide effective suggestions for realizing the goal of"promoting gender equality and women’s all-round development" in the outline of the 14th five-year plan.The income in gender income gap includes not only wage income,but also business income and property income.Since the changes and influencing factors of wage income are relatively stable and highly comparable,which can reflect the income of most employed workers in the labor market,this thesis specifically studies the wage gap between men and women.The gender wage gap studied academically is not only reflected in whether "equal work" is "equal pay",but also in whether men and women are "equal work".Therefore,when studying gender wage gap,the impact of occupational segmentation cannot be ignored.Based on the data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2010,2012,2014,2016 and 2018,this thesis selects people aged 16 to 60 who are employed full-time in off-farm occupations and have earned wage income,and conducts empirical analysis under the guidance of theoretical model to explore the tendency and influencing factors of gender wage gap and occupational gender segregation,and decomposes gender wage gap from the perspective of mean and conditional distribution to analyze the main sources of gender wage gap and the impact of occupational gender segregation on gender wage gap,and finally puts forward policy suggestions based on the research conclusions.This thesis found that the gender wage gap increased first and then decreased from 2010 to 2018,and was still expanding compared with 2010.The distribution characteristics of the gender wage gap showed a trend of "sticky floor effect" strengthening first and then weakening,indicating that the gender wage gap of low-income groups is larger.The gender wage gap mainly comes from unexplained factors within the profession such as gender discrimination,and the role of unexplained factors within the profession in explaining the gender wage gap increases.The degree of occupational gender segregation deepens,and the gender division of employment between occupations shows an overall effect of reducing the gender wage gap with a small impact.The gap between men and women in explanatory factors such as personal characteristics has shifted in favor of narrowing the gender wage gap,among them,education level and work experience have important influence,married status is more beneficial to the increase of male wage income,while parenting is not conducive to the increase of female wage income.In addition,the gender wage gap at each quantile is mainly caused by unexplained factors such as gender discrimination.Based on the above research conclusions,the suggestions of this thesis include:vigorously advocating and appealing to all sectors of society to improve gender equality awareness,strengthening gender equality publicity and education;ensuring equal employment opportunities for men and women,and strengthening the implementation and supervision of relevant laws and regulations;working together to create a more women-friendly career environment,such as increasing paternity leave for men and promoting the sharing of family and child care responsibilities between men and women;encouraging women,especially low-income women,to improve their educational level and accumulate work experience;expanding channels for working people to upgrade their education and vocational skills.