A note on the gender wage gap among managerial positions using a counterfactual decomposition approach: sticky floor or glass ceiling?

Abstract

In this article, we apply a counterfactual decomposition approach using Quantile Regression (QR) to the wage distribution of managerial workforce in Italy. We find evidence of both significant sticky floor and glass ceiling effects for the Gender Wage Gap (GWG). Furthermore, the U-shaped figure of the pay gap is mostly due to the difference in rewards that the two genders receive for their characteristics, whose relative incidence is also continuously increasing as we move to upper quantiles.

Acknowledgements

We thank Marco Marini for invaluable suggestions and comments. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and, in particular, do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Economic Development. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹See Bertrand and Hallock (2001) and Jurajda and Paligorova (2009).

²Smith et al. (2010), by means of a different procedure, demonstrate that in Denmark there is still a considerable glass ceiling but also evidence of sticky floors.

³As a matter of fact, Arulampalam et al. (2007) and Wahlberg (2010) use this approach for exploring differences between public and private sectors.