The Gender Earnings Gap in Britain: Including the Workplace

The earnings gap between male and female employees is substantial and lingering. Using linked data for Britain, in this paper we show that an important contribution to this gap is made by the workplace in which the employee works. Evidence for workplace and occupational segregation as partial explanations of the earnings gap is presented. Having allowed also for individual worker characteristics there remains a substantial within-workplace and within-occupation gender gap. The contribution of these factors, as well as the earnings gap itself, differ significantly across sectors of the labour market. The relative unimportance of occupational segregation and the large remaining gender gap suggest that stronger enforcement of equal pay legislation is likely to be the most appropriate policy response. Copyright © 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and The University of Manchester.