Gender Inequalities in the Workplace: The Effects on Wages in European Member States

In the last century, gender inequalities have decreased in most of the developed countries, but gender inequalities still persist in the XXI century. Once the stereotypes related to gender gap are hard to break in societies and especially in the labour market, many efforts have been done in recent years by governments (through laws, incentives, public and organizational policies, and others), national and international institutions to decrease the gender gap in the workplace, but much more has to continue to be done. This paper has as the main goal to investigate the effects of gender inequalities in the workplace at the level of the specific outcome, based on the study of the effects on wages and gender pay gap in European member states. The analysed outcome effects of gender inequalities at the workplace, based on wages and on the gender pay gap in European member states, allow to conclude that, besides the positive evolution in the last decades of women labour force participation rate, the inequalities still persist. The differences traduced in average wage gap differences can be based, according to several analyzed authors, on specific factors, which reflect on the labour outcomes. These differences in gender wage gap vary across countries, being in 2016 the women's gross hourly earnings, on average, 16.3 % below those of men; and varying by 20 percentage points, ranging from 5.2 % in Romania to 25.3 % in Estonia. According to the working profile, the gender pay gap for part-time workers ranges from -0.5 % in Germany to 26.7 % in Portugal and for full-time workers ranging from 0.1 % in Italy to 18.7 % in Latvia. For the gender pay gap in public versus private sector, most of the EU countries verify a higher gender pay gap in the private sector than in the public sector, varied in the private sector from 6.8 % in Romania to 24.0 % in Germany, and in the public sector from -6.6 % in Cyprus to 24.4 % in the United Kingdom, which may be justified by the fact that within the public sector, in most European Union member states, employees are protected by collective pay agreements and other similar contracts.