Full-Time and Part-Time Work and the Gender Wage Gap

Abstract

Using hourly and weekly wages from the Canadian Labour Force Survey from 2000 until 2018, workers were separated into full-time and part-time and the following striking observation was documented. The overall gender wage gap is larger than either the full-time pay gap or the part-time pay gap, even after controlling for detailed personal and job characteristics. This result is a consequence of two findings: (i) part-time wages are lower than full-time wages, and (ii) the majority of part-time workers are women. In aggregation, this brings down the average female wage, leading to a larger aggregate gender wage gap. This was further linked to a differential selection by gender into full-time and part-time work, with women of higher earnings potential being overrepresented in the pool of part-time workers, resulting in no gender pay gap in the part-time worker category. Policies targeted at encouraging full-time employment for women should therefore reduce the gender wage gap.

When Pay Equity Policy Is not Enough: Persistence of the Gender Wage Gap Among Health, Education, and STEM Professionals in Canada, 2006‒2016

“…It is possible that some respondents' employment income may not have corresponded to their reported main occupation, which in turn may not have precisely reflected provincial regulations for the practice of certain professions (e.g., architects, engineers, registered nurses). While this analysis was limited to full-time workers (a variable with the same reference year as employment income, and a common approach in the literature), given that more women are in part-time work compared with men, a differential selection by sex may have resulted (Antonie et al, 2020). Moreover, given the present focus on specific groups of professionals, sample size limitations and privacy controls surrounding the data precluded our ability to disaggregate results for women and men across the component groups of Indigenous identity.…”

COVID-19 and gender disparities: Labour market outcomes

“…8 The interactive effects show that full-time female workers saw a decline in hourly wages, with the gender gap in this job category increasing by 6%. Notably, while there was no impact on part-time wages, research show that the gender pay gap in Canada was much more profound in full-time than part-time jobs in the pre-pandemic period ( Antonie et al, 2020 ). Thus, the negative effect on the full-time female jobs worsened the already prevailing gender wage gap.…”

“…The effects of lockdowns and potential inflation indicate that the gender wage disparity will continue to increase, worsening the economic health of women and making them even more vulnerable to future event risks. The worsening of the gender wage gap is troubling as studies before the pandemic showed some progress to bridge this disadvantage for females in the labour market, especially in full-time jobs ( Antonie et al, 2020 ).…”

“…The pandemic severely affected specific sectors, such as accommodation, travel, and retail, which led to a profound reduction in employment along with an increase in wage disparity ( Singh et al, 2022 ). These sectors predominantly employed part-time and female workers offering lower wages ( Antonie et al, 2020 ). Due to these industries' rigidity and inflexibility in providing meaningful, reliable, and consistent remote work opportunities, women are more likely to be unable to find consistent employment because of pandemic-related disruptions ( Singh et al, 2022 ).…”

Does it pay to be green? An exploratory analysis of wage differentials between green and non-green industries

“…There is also evidence to suggest that employment characteristics are significant determinants of wages. Specifically, the literature suggests that differences in wages can be found across occupations (Haupt and Ebner, 2020;De Byer and Knight, 1989), between the public sector and private sector (Tansel et al, 2020;Depalo et al, 2015) and between full-time and part-time workers (Antonie et al, 2020). The role of employment characteristics in wage determination in Barbados is captured by the occupation, employment type and employment status variables.…”