The conditional gender wage gap in Egypt: premium or penalty?

This paper examines the gender wage gaps along the wage distribution in Egypt using individual data from the labor market panel surveys 1998, 2006 and 2012 and a quantile regression approach. Results show that in average female’s hourly wage is significantly less than that of males. While the wage gap in average is in favor of men it is decreasing with time and with education. Across quantiles the effect of being a female on hourly wages is negative, however this gap is higher at the lower and highest quantiles as compared to the middle ones. Indicating the presence of glass ceiling as well as sticky floors. Results also showed that household characteristics and location matter for the gap at higher quintile i.e. for the glass ceiling phenomena while the gap at the lower quantiles i.e. the sticky floor could be attributed to other unobservable related to location and social context. In societies like Egypt social context may enable males to compete better in the labor market. Hence resulting in women being paid less. Thus, key policy options must include not simply the usual policies to improve women’s productivity but policies that promote gender equity in hiring, and in the workplace. Moreover, policy options need to be extended out of the labor market and into the household to help women overcome unobservable that trap them in low-paying jobs