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ABSTRACT
Recent research has suggested that there is a trade-off between the ‘family-friendliness’ of jobs, occupations and welfare states on the one hand and women's relative wages on the other. In particular, the extensive family policies found in Scandinavia are thought to harm highly educated women by affecting occupational segregation and workplace skill development. In this article, we use pooled wage data from the European Social Survey of 2004 and 2010 to examine the mechanisms behind the gender wage gap in Germany, Sweden and the UK and compare the situation of high- and low-skilled employees. Our findings show that the gender wage gap among high-skilled employees in Sweden is larger than in the UK, but not larger than in Germany. Also, segregation and work-related training are no more important in Sweden than in the other countries. Another important finding is that the mechanisms behind the gender wage gap differ between high- and low-skilled employees in ways not predicted by the trade-off argument. In particular, the large unexplained wage gap among high-skilled employees provides new theoretical challenges.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Anne Grönlund is professor of sociology, currently employed at the Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research concerns a range of labour market issues as well as work-family reconciliation, with a focus on gender and gender segregation. Important themes include flexibility and autonomy at work, work-family conflict, skill development and wages.
Charlotta Magnusson is a researcher (PhD) at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University. Her research focuses on gender stratification in the labour market; in particular wage, working conditions and occupational prestige. Currently, she is studying how family status is related to the gender wage gap.
Notes
1Becker (Citation1964/Citation1993) distinguishes between general skills – which are of equal value in many different companies – and specific skills – useful at only one firm – and argues that firms only have incentives to invest in the latter. To make a return on their investments, employers attempt to keep employees with specific skills in the company and because these skills are of little value on the open market, workers have little incentive to quit. Thus, short-term work horizons become a barrier to specific skill investments. The issue of general versus specific skill is complex and recent research suggests that most skills are transferable, that is, valuable at various but not all firms. However, Estévez-Abe argues that in CMEs where institutional arrangements reduce labour turnover, employers will invest in long-term skill development and that it is the ‘greater involvement of employers in the skill acquisition process' that is problematic (Citation2005: 191). ‘Whether general or firm-specific, the fact that employers rely on on-the-job training makes them value long enterprise tenure and thus be wary of women [–]' (Estévez-Abe Citation2005: 208).
2Obviously, there are also differences in the educational systems of these countries. VoC-scholars point out that vocational training is more important in CME countries, while in LMEs, education is more general, particularly at the secondary school level but also regarding university diplomas (Estévez-Abe et al. Citation2001; Estévez-Abe Citation2005). Potentially then, some types of education would be highly valued in CMEs. However, our data do not allow us to distinguish between different types of education. Our hypothesis are based on the broad claims made by, for example, Estévez-Abe, who consistently argues that it is employers involvement in the skill formation process, that is, on-the-job training, that makes CMEs more gender segregating (see Estévez-Abe Citation2005 and footnote 1).
3The discrepancies between the perspectives have been formulated by Mandel and Shalev (Citation2009b) and Estévez-Abe (Citation2009). One difference lies in the role ascribed to the public sector. Mandel and Shalev argue that public sector employment, with high-wage floors but a low-wage ceiling as compared to the private sector, is beneficial for low-skilled women but hamper the attainments of high-skilled women. Estévez-Abe focuses on private firms, but acknowledges that public employers should be less sensitive to work interruptions and therefore, such employment can compensate for low demand for female employees in the private sector. Thus, although the theoretical focuses differ, the empirical predictions about segregation converge. Finally, we note that while Mandel and colleagues discuss class interactions, Estévez-Abe pays special attention to highly educated women. However, their predictions for this group – central also to Mandel and colleagues – appear to converge.
4Recently, family policies in Germany have undergone reforms. In 2007, the parental leave system was transformed to a system with shorter and more well-compensated leaves. However, according to Thévenon (Citation2011), the model of one-earner families still shapes the institutional setting. For example, tax incentives are directed to such families and there is a shortage of childcare services for small children (cf. Korpi et al. Citation2013).
5It can be argued that different family policy components will have different effects on women's labour market attainments. For example, parental leave entitlements are likely to increase women's work interruptions, whereas extensive provisions of childcare facilitate women's continuous employment (cf. Estévez-Abe Citation2005). However, we argue, in line with Mandel and Semyonov (Citation2005), Mandel and Shalev (Citation2009a), and Mandel (Citation2012), that welfare state interventions should be regarded as policy packages rather than as a set of distinct variables because they have ‘shared effects that cannot be detached from one another, either theoretically or empirically' (Mandel and Shalev Citation2009a: 1879). In particular, defamilialized public childcare leads to an inclusion of mothers in the work force (lack of selection) and creates jobs in a highly feminized and low-paid service sector (segregation).
6In the welfare sector dummy, we included the following NACE categories: public administration and defense, compulsory social security, education, human health services and residential care and social work activities, water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation. The reference group comprises all other categories.
7Required education is measured by the following question: ‘If someone was applying nowadays for the job you do now, would they need any education or vocational schooling beyond compulsory education? If so, about how many years of education or vocational schooling beyond compulsory education would they need?'.
8Using an interaction variable (woman*welfare), we find that the difference in the gender wage gap between sectors is not significant.
9Estimations with control for number of children in the household and age of the children have been made but did not change the results.
10Possibly, this lack of significance may be due to the relatively small sample size and/or the low cut-off point, making the high-skilled group relatively heterogeneous. However, previous studies support the conclusion that in the UK, the gender wage gap tends to be larger among low-skilled employees (e.g. Mandel Citation2012). In all other groups, the gender difference in wages is statistically significant.