ABSTRACT
This chapter questions the apparent success story of decreasing gender pay gaps in Portugal and Spain through two cycles of crisis and recovery: the austerity and the pandemic years. It provides a descriptive analysis of the evolution of real full-time equivalent earnings since 2010 and discusses the extent to which such trends were affected both by the structural recompositioning of these countries’ labour markets, accelerated through the crises, and by changes in wage setting and collective bargaining institutions implemented in reaction to such crises. We argue that both effects reduced bargaining power among men at the top and the middle of the earnings distribution, contributing to falling real earnings relative to women. We further argue that the progressive but partial reversal of austerity reforms in collective bargaining, the renewed focus on minimum wages as an instrument of real wage growth and the revival of public sector employment helped boost female earnings. The chapter paints a more nuanced vision of such a success story by highlighting how pay increases in traditional low-paid female-dominated sectors (grounded by the substantial growth in minimum wages) interacted with the difficulties of social dialogue to underpin increases in real earnings, especially affecting blue collar and middle-skilled jobs dominated by men.
