The gender pay gap and trade liberalisation: evidence for India

Economic reforms and the relative wage position of women in India

By: Reilly B & Dutta P
Produced by: University of Sussex, UK , 2005

This paper investigates the extent to which economic reforms in India have affected the relative wage position of women. It uses nationally representative employment surveys to examine the magnitude of the gender pay gap in India and its relationship to a set of trade liberalisation measures. Conventional index number procedures are used to decompose the gender pay gap into ‘endowment’ and ‘treatment’ components. The ‘treatment’ components comprised about one-third of the overall wage gap in all selected years, a fact consistent with the existing evidence for India, which is largely based on data drawn either from urban or occupation-specific labour markets.