Occupational segregation and the Portuguese gender wage gap

This paper analyses the role of occupational segregation in explaining the overall gender wage gap in the Portuguese economy. The objective is to investigate to what extent wage disparities between male and female workers can be explained by differences in occupational distributions. The Brown et al. wage differential decomposition method is used, based on micro data of the year 2000, gathered by the Portuguese Ministry of Social Security and Employment. This method decomposes the total earnings gap into occupational segregation and within-occupation wage differences. Results reveal that a substantial portion of the gender wage differential in the Portuguese labor market is explained by within-occupation wage differences