ABSTRACT
Gender differences in earnings reflect and reinforce gender inequality in the labour market and beyond. Reducing such inequality has both equity and efficiency gains. This chapter accounts for gaps between men and women across their earnings distributions, using quantile regressions and a wage gap decomposition method. It explores the extent to which gaps are explained by differences in the human capital of men and women as compared to disparities in the returns to human capital by gender, revealing the existence of both “glass ceilings” and “sticky floors” among the STEP countries. Women who face larger earnings gaps even when they have the same productive characteristics as men at the upper end of the earnings distribution are said to face glass ceilings, while women who are similarly comparable to men at the lower end of the earnings distribution yet face larger unexplained gaps are said to be trapped by sticky floors. The chapter explores whether patterns in glass ceilings and sticky floors are associated with economic and institutional features and policy environments of the STEP countries and examines the extent to which expanded measures of human capital, such as socioemotional skills, mitigate glass ceilings or sticky floors.
