ABSTRACT
The nature of jobs has been changing across the globe due to increasingly globalized markets, greater automation in the workplace and the birth and death of industries, with consequences for which skills are in greater demand. As both a factor and result of these shifts, average education levels have risen worldwide, narrowing gender gaps in average schooling levels. Women and men, however, do not benefit equally from their higher human capital; women typically still earn only a fraction of what men earn and don’t choose or get the same jobs. This chapter reviews the global evidence on these patterns and trends which provide the motivation for the study. It argues that a measure of human capital that includes education as well as cognitive and socioemotional skills helps to understand better how human capital explains gender differences in employment and earnings. Previous studies that have used a similar approach have focused on advanced countries, leaving a knowledge gap with respect to low- and middle-income countries. The chapter introduces the survey data from 13 middle-income countries that are analyzed in the book. The contextual diversity of these countries enriches the analysis of the role of human capital in gender inequality in the workplace.
