ERF 26th Annual Conference
Gender Wage Gap and International Trade: Evidence From Turkey
No.
ERF26_242
Publisher
ERF
Date
July, 2020
Topic
F1. Trade
F. International Economics
Gender wage gap is a widely discussed issue in labor economics. This paper contributes to the literature on two fronts. Using 2006, 2010 and 2014 Structure of Earnings Survey data we first decompose the overall gender wage gap to its explained and unexplained components. Next, the effect of international trade on the gender wage gap is investigated. Using both the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and OLS regression we compare the gender wage gap in the tradable and non-tradable sectors. Our results show that there is a gender wage gap of 2.6% in Turkey due to discrimination. The decomposition results show the gender wage gap in the tradable sectors to be 4.2%, while in the non-tradable sectors, it is 3.2%. In addition, the regression results reveal that the gender wage gap in the tradable sectors is 3.3%, while in the non-tradable sectors it is 1.9%. We conclude that, in contradiction to Becker’s theory, the gender wage gap in Turkey is higher in the tradable sectors than in the nontradable sectors.
Authors
Serife Genç Ileri
Assistant Professor of Economics, Istanbul Technical University
