A Cross-National Comparison of Gender Gaps

Abstract

Gender gaps in employment and pay are interrelated indicators of gender inequality that may be affected in countervailing ways by regulatory interventions. However, policies designed to produce a more gender-egalitarian sharing of paid and unpaid labor, and consequently the workplace penalties of parenthood, have potential to enhance their complementarity. The cross-national comparisons examined in this chapter indicate that narrow gender gaps in both employment and pay can coexist, and that this can occur where generous and gender-egalitarian work/family provisions are available. However relationships between the overarching gender order, policy interventions, and wider regulatory frameworks are shown to be complex, underlining the difficulties of generating change. Overall the data suggest that narrowing of these gender gaps will be slow and far from inevitable.