Literature Review On Gender Inequality

Literature review

This section presents a review of methodologies, issues and studies on wage determination and gender discrimination. To place our study in the perspective of the literature and to save space, we focus on empirical literature from developing countries but omit the wealth of literature from industrial countries.

Studies on gender differentials in earnings have traditionally used the methodology developed by Oaxaca (1973) for decomposing the wage differential into the effects of discrimination and the effect of individual characteristics. Oaxaca argues that discrimination against females can be said to exist whenever the relative wage of males exceeds the relative wage that would have prevailed if males and females were paid

Appleton et al. (1990) argue that the gender differential in access to jobs in is confined to the private sector, which is attributed to low educational levels mapping onto lower wages and therefore onto a lower supply response in Kenya.

The author observes that discrimination in the labor market gives rise to three of the observed gender biases: First, controlling for education, women are less likely to work for wages than men. Second, parents are less likely to invest in the education of girls than in that of boys. Third, women are less educated and hence less likely to be in the labor market

Manda (1997) argues that education is more important in influencing female than male participation decisions. Collier (1990) asserts that once in the labor market, women earn equal pay to that of men, controlling for their characteristics. Nevertheless, women are less likely than men with similar characteristics to enter the labor market, but gender differences in participation narrow as education

Appleton et al. (1999) argue that lack of experience and discrimination against married women are plausible explanations for greater gender differential in Kenya. Behrman and Wolfe (1984) also find that experience plays a substantial role in determining labor force participation and earnings, as well as in sorting among sectorial labor force participation. They report that job tenure has a strong and positive impact on earnings in aggregate, while job experience has a moderate positive effect on earnings. Dabalen (2000) shows that in Kenya, women with the least skills saw their position worsen relative to men with similar skills, even as women with the most skills were gaining ground on comparable men.

Lack of assets not only leads to lower participation by women but also constrains girls’ access to education. Alderman and King (1998) indicate that the absence of cash earnings in many societies limits the ability of women to realize and remit market returns from their education