Gender pay gap in India: Unskilled labors

Abstract

This examines the extent of gender wage gap and its determinants in urban labor market in India. The study finds that women’s work is undervalued even in regular salaried jobs in India’s urban labor market and female workers are getting substantially lower wages than their male counterpart in almost all sectors and occupations sub-categories despite controlling for differences in experience, education, geographical differences and other individual characteristics. When we disentangled the gender pay gap, we found that around two-thirds of the pay gap is attributed to pure labor market discrimination and only one-third is attributed to endowment difference. The pay gap steadily declines towards higher end of wage distribution. This clearly indicates that there exists ‘sticky floor’ in India’s urban labor market. Such persis tent and high level of gender pay gap may pose a serious challenge on India’s path to inclusive growth and achieving decent working conditions.