Most of what we read about the gender wage gap is unhelpful, because it simply compares wages between genders. On the face of it, that seems like an obvious comparison. However, women and men tend to work in different occupations, and in different industries, and those differences go some way towards explaining the gender wage gap. But not entirely - there is a persistent gap even when we look within a particular occupation and industry. What explains that gap? There is evidence that suggests about half of the remaining gender wage gap might be explained by culture (see this post, but noting this counterpoint).
So, I was interested to read this new report (with additional summary here, and non-technical article in The Conversation here) by David Throsby, Katya Petetskaya, and Sunny Shin (all Macquarie University). There were a couple of reasons for my interest. First, it looks purely at earnings of artists, which mostly abstracts from any occupation differences or industry differences between the genders. To my mind, looking at artists also avoids any issues arising from the amount of time women may have taken outside the workforce, because the productivity of artists (as measured by their earnings) probably depends less on their labour force tenure than productivity does for other occupations. Second, Throsby et al. perform their comparison for Australian artists from an English speaking background (ESB, or 'mainstream artists') and a non-English speaking background (NESB) separately, allowing us to see the role that culture plays in the gender wage gap.
For ESB artists, Throsby et al. find that women earn between 22 and 27 percent less than men. However, for NESB artists:
We see no statistically significant income penalty in aggregate for female First Nations artists practising in remote areas of Australia. This result appears in contrast to the gender gap that we observe for mainstream artists.
Of course, we can't be sure as to the reason for the lack of gender wage gap among First Nations artists, but the difference with ESB artists is striking. Throsby et al. infer that:
The social structures and cultural norms within which First Nations artists in remote communities live and work reflect the long traditions of economic and social organisation that have evolved in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander society since before the colonial period. As such, the roles of men and women can be described as they have been in the past, namely distinctive but neither superior nor inferior. In this context, women occupy a strong and respected position...
When it comes to creative incomes, our results show that First Nations women artists practising in remote areas of Australia do not suffer from the same sorts of income disadvantage that is evident among mainstream artists... This equality could perhaps be explained by more equal incentives and opportunities for male and female artists in remote First Nations communities, but it also appears to reflect an absence of the sort of systemic gender-based discrimination that continues to affect women artists working in the mainstream.
One thing is clear. The gender wage gap is not inevitable, even if it is persistent even when discrimination is not possible (see this post). If it is indeed culture that drives a substantial part of the gender wage gap, it will take long-term cultural change to eliminate the gap.
[HT: The Conversation]
Read more:
- Compensating differentials, preferences, and the gender gap in wages
- The gender wage gap, when pay rates, job choice, and discrimination are not factors
- Reviewing the gender wage gap
- Cultural differences and the gender wage gap
- A counter-point to Wednesday's post on cultural differences and the gender wage gap
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