Despite
the diversities in economic development between the
two regions of Asia and Europe, many economies are experiencing
steadily increasing trends of female labour
force participation.
Along
with this increased participation in the formal sector
and the awareness of the need to empower women, has
come the concept of gender as an overarching socio-cultural
variable, seen in relation to other factors such as
age, class and ethnicity. Gender however, is not synonymous
with women, nor is it a zero-sum game implying loss
for men. Rather, gender wage equality
refers to a wage differential that only measures the
extent of both men and women realising their full potential
in terms of economic participation and position and
is not determined by the fact of an individual having
been born male or female.
Achieving
gender wage equality is a slow process as it challenges
one of the most deeply ingrained of all human attitudes.
Despite the intense efforts of many agencies and organisations
and numerous inspiring successes, the gender wage differential
still persists. Internationally, on average, women typically
earn only two-thirds (or approximately 67%) of male
incomes. All European countries still experience this
gender wage gap, despite some progress. Women in Eastern
and Central Europe have wages approximately 20% lower
than men. This figure is not too distinctly different
from Asia where on average women's monthly earnings
range from 70% to 85% of men's monthly earnings. However
the gender pay disparity tends to be smaller in Asian
economies such as Hong Kong and Singapore than in Japan
Korea and Taiwan despite them being modern capitalised
economies. One of the plausible factors contributing
to the larger gender wage gap in the latter economies
could be the impact of cultural influences for example.
This lecture will further elaborate on identifying the
various factors that impact the wage differentials in
the various countries of Asia and Europe.
From
a policy perspective, this lecture will enable one to
determine whether the focus of policy to narrow the
gender wage gap should be upon enforcing equal
pay within occupations or redistributing
female employees between occupations . Occupational
discrimination requires policies related to pre-market
entry while within-sector wage effects requires policies
related to post-market entry. This issue is especially
important for economies in their labour supply development.
Although increasingly women have managed entries into
non-traditional area of the workforce, if they are restricted
in job opportunities, paid less than their male counterparts
and discouraged to progress up the hierarchy of occupations
then they might not invest in education and training
sufficiently and that would put them particularly vulnerable
to the risk of poverty. Most importantly, for the economy
as a whole, there could be allocative inefficiency that
under-utilises this source of human capital.
Is
the size of the gender wage gap similar in Asia and
Europe? What are the explained factors that determine
the gender wage gap in Asia and Europe? What is the
major distinction between the occupational-segregation
wage differences and the within-sector wage differences?
These are among the questions that Teo Siew Yean will
address during her lecture.
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