Attitudes to gender and personality in the Australian gender wage gap

This paper estimates the effects of gender role attitudes and personality traits on the gender wage gap in Australia. Applying standard decomposition techniques and controlling for a widerange of variables, the paper finds that the overall gender wage gap in our estimates on average stood at 17.2% in 2019. Furthermore, the major portion of this wage gap remains unexplained, which accounts for at least 72.7% of the total gender wage gap. The results establish gender role attitudes as a key predictor of this pay gap both in the explained and unexplained part of the wage decomposition. It also shows that the impact of personality traits depends on whether the big five traits or the sub-traits are used in the analysis. Even some of the sub-traits belonging to the same category can influence the gender pay gap in opposite directions. Overall, the estimates establish the importance of psychological variables as more important than traditional human capital and other work-related characteristics in explaining the remaining gender wage gap in Australia