Gender Discrimination In Kenya Essay

WAGE DETERMINATION AND THE GENDER WAGE GAP IN KENYA: ANY EVIDENCE OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION?

1. INTRODUCTION

This study presents an analysis of the determinants of wages as well as a decomposition of the gender gap across sectors in Kenya. With an increase in wage employment over the years, the country is still faced with some great level of unemployment especially with the women category of the labour force. This paper examines the distribution of labour by gender across the job market in Kenya in order to determine if there is discrimination against women in both labour market participation and wages.

1.1 Problem Statement

Available literature argues that labour markets are segmented and segregated by gender in most developing countries with the bulk of women’s work taking place in non-market activities in the home or the informal sector. Women also have lower labour force participation rates and higher unemployment rates than their male counterparts, especially in urban areas. Furthermore, women’s earnings are consistently lower than men even when adjusting for other factors. The

The study tests the hypothesis that women participate less in the labour market partly because of their characteristics and partly because of gender discrimination in wage setting. The source of data for the study was taken from the 1994 Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMSII) conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Planning Unit of the Ministry of Planning and National Development. With a sample size of 59,183 individuals from 10,857 households. Participation in the labour market was modelled using multinomial logit techniques while OLS with and without sample selection was used to estimate the wage equations. Decomposition used the uncorrected OLS results following the approaches of Oaxaca (1973) and Neumark