Gender wage gap among the educated: evidence from fields of study in Chile

Abstract

This paper estimates the gender wage gap in Chile for workers with higher education within the framework of the glass ceiling literature. We study the change in the gender wage gap by field of study from 2017 to 2022. For this purpose, we estimate a Mincer model with Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, using data from the Chilean National Socioeconomic Household Characterization. Our results document a gender wage gap in the range of 17–25% before the COVID-19 pandemic and a reduction of 2–5 percentage points after the COVID-19 pandemic. Consistent with international evidence, we find that while there has been a reduction in the gender wage gap, the portion of wages that observed characteristics cannot explain has increased. Furthermore, we find heterogeneous effects across fields. For example, there were statistically significant reductions in the gender wage gap in fields such as education and healthcare after the COVID-19 pandemic. There are substantial increases in the gender wage gap among STEM majors (degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math) after the COVID-19 pandemic and evidence of statistical discrimination against women. Our findings suggest that policies that seek to reduce the gender wage gap should be sector-specific, as graduates from different fields face specific labor market characteristics.