Half the Sky? The Female Labor Income Share in a Global Perspective

Gender remains one of the key characteristics along which inequalities take shape within countries and across the globe. In this paper, we analyze gender inequality from the perspective of labor income and explore the following questions: Which share of labor income do women earn in a country, a world region, and globally? How has this share evolved since 1990? Labor income includes wages and salaries as well as the labor share of self-employment income. Our inequality indicator, the female labor income share, considers gender differentials in earnings as well as labor force participation. Combining employment and labor income data from the International Labour Organization, the Luxembourg Income Study, and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, we find that women earned about 30% of global labor income in the early 1990s and 35% today. The female labor income share varies across countries with some distinctive regional patterns. One factor for a low female labor income share is the under-representation of women in top-paying jobs. Based on administrative data, we show the evolution over time of women's share among top wage earners for Brazil, Costa Rica, France, Spain, and the U.S