Discussion paper

DP13577 Gender Wage Gaps and Worker Mobility: Evidence from the Garment Sector in Bangladesh

Data from 70 large export-oriented garment manufacturers in Bangladesh show that gender wage gaps are similar to those found in higher-income countries. Among pro-duction workers, women’s wages are 8 percent lower. We show that by combining short administrative panels, survey data from a representative sample of workers, and struc-ture, we can estimate how the wage gap evolves over workers’ careers. Gender differ-ences in internal and across-factory promotions contribute roughly equally to the emergence of the gender gap over worker careers. Differences in promotion rates ap-pear to arise mainly from career concerns rather than frictions coming from household responsibilities.

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Citation

Menzel, A and C Woodruff (2019), ‘DP13577 Gender Wage Gaps and Worker Mobility: Evidence from the Garment Sector in Bangladesh‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13577. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp13577