Re-examining Gender Earning Differentials in Malaysian Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector is a major avenue for female employment in the urban labor market in Malaysia. Only two studies, both published more than two decades ago, have examined gender earning differentials in this sector. Since then, the percentage of women being educated has increased, along with their participation rate, and several laws protecting their rights have also been passed, making it timely to re-examine the earnings gap. We do this by drawing on more recent data from a larger representative survey of manufacturing employees. The Blinder-Oaxaca technique, utilized in the previous two studies, was used to estimate the existing earnings gap and to decompose it to differences attributable to endowments, coefficients (traditionally viewed as subsuming discrimination), and the interaction between the two. We found a smaller gap than previously reported, with better female endowments helping to narrow the gap, and unexplained differences in coefficients being responsible for the remaining gap. The interaction effect was not statistically significant. Contrary to the earlier studies, the differential treatment of women in the manufacturing sector, rather than endowment differences, is hampering the equalization of earnings. This calls for newer approaches to closing the earnings gap.

Gender Earnings Gap among Urban Youth Adults in Bangladesh: A Comparative Static Analysis

Despite the importance and recognition of young women's engagement in income-generating activities for socio-economic development, the gender earnings gap still persists across countries, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh. This study presents two datasets from the most recent past to provide fresh evidence for Bangladesh’s urban labor market that has yet to be closely studied. Using individual-level data from the BBS’s (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) Labour Force Surveys (LFS) conducted in 2010 and 2015, we have explored the gender earnings gap among the youth (aged 18 to 35 as per Bangladesh’s National Youth Policy 2017) working and earning in the urban labor markets of Bangladesh by applying the three approaches: Mincerian regression, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and Quantile regression. The first approach confirms that young women earn significantly less than young men in the urban labor markets after controlling the influences of the covariates. The detailed decomposition results of the second approach indicate that gender differences in hours worked, education, firm characteristics and locations also contribute to the gender earnings gap and the market discrimination against the youth women’s earnings remain the same over the years. The third approach using the lens of distribution perspective shows that earnings gaps persist up to the 25th percentile of distribution in 2010 though it persists across the entire earnings distribution in 2015. The results suggest that engaging more women in income-generating activities, increasing the number of hours worked, improving access to higher education and creating enabling working environment for women might reduce the gender earnings gap.

Capitalist agriculture and the creation of the circular migrant: Understanding COVID-19’s impact on internal migrants in India

COVID-19 has affected the internal migrants in India badly. When the government announced a lockdown with a 4-hour notice, millions of these migrants, who were a part of the vast unorganized labor force to be found in urban areas, were left stranded. In our article, we analyze the structural factors that underpin this crisis. We argue that the migrant crisis that unfolded in the urban areas has its roots in India’s embrace of globalization, the rise of capitalistic agriculture, and the increasing casualization of labor work in the urban labor markets.

Gender Pay Gap Among Urban-Urban Migrant Workers: Pakistan's Two-Tier Urban Labor Market

Urban-urban migration has socio-economic and demographic consequences on the labor markets. It affects job mobility and gender-balance in the urban workplace. This study analyzes the gender wage gap among urban-urban migrant workers in Pakistan. The study used the most recent Labour Force Survey, a nationally representative dataset, to identify the determinants of wages for male and female migrant workers separately. The wages of urban-urban female migrants tend to be 45% lower than their male counterparts. The results indicated disparities in working hours and human capital endowment as some of the contributing factors to the increasing gender wage gap. This research calls for implementing drastic measures, i.e., gender-insensitive capacity building of urban migrant workers, workplace incentives for women, and enhancement of women leadership roles, to reduce gender inequalities in the urban labor market.