The Consequences of Economic Restructuring for the Gender Earnings Gap in Israel, 1972-1995

Abstract

This article adopts a `structural perspective' of earnings determinants to examine changes over time in the gender earnings gap in Israeli society. It studies the combined effect of the expansion of the services and public sector employment on the gender earnings gap, utilizing data from the 1972 and 1995 censuses in Israel. It shows that within the context of an advanced legislation system regarding women's payment and rights, Israeli women are in disadvantaged economic positions relative to men in all segments of the economy. However, Israeli women are in a relatively better economic position in 1995 than in 1972. It also shows that some segments of the economy are more `women friendly' than others. Women in the private sector experience the highest level of pay discrimination, while women in the public sector experience the lowest. Finally, it shows that pay discrimination against women is similar in both industrial sectors - service and transformative. It thus concludes that despite the impressive growth in service employment over the years, the division of the economy into public and private sectors is a more useful feature in explaining the gender earnings gap in Israel.

The effect of higher education on the gender wage gap

“…For example, a possible explanation for differences in the wage gap between the two countries may lie in the differences in the female labour force participation. Yaish and Kraus (2003) show that womens" economic position depends in some institutional factors, and the level of restructuration of the labour markets. In that sense, since female participation is lower in Greece than the UK, it might be assumed that in Greece only the most determined females participate, and thus the wage gap is lower in Greece.…”

The Second Demographic Transition in Israel: One for All?

“…These are the state-religion relations and traditionalism of the society. Religion plays a key role in the public sphere (Liebman 1993(Liebman , 1997Fogiel-Bijaoui 2002;McQuillan 2004;Smooha 2005); the family laws are religious (Gottschalk 1951;Strum 1989), and gender roles are traditional (Semyonov and LewinEpstein 1991;Stier and Lewin-Epstein 2000;Safir et al 2003;Toren 2003;Yaish and Kraus 2003;Stier and Yaish 2008). Nonetheless, Jewish Israelis are gradually adopting alternative lifestyles, self-expression values are rising (Yuchtman-Ya'ar 2002), and 'postmodern families' and such forms of union as cohabitation are slowly spreading (Katz 2001;Fogiel-Bijaoui 2002;Baloush-Kleiman and Sharlin 2004).…”

The Determinants of Women's Employment Dynamics: The Case of Israeli Women

“…As in most Western societies, gender segregation in the Israeli labour force is high and hardly decreased between 1972 and 1995 (Izraeli, 1979;Cohen et al, 1987;Kraus, 2002). Most Israeli women work in white-collar occupations (Semyonov and Kraus, 1983), and about half of all employed women work in the public sector (Yaish and Kraus, 2003;Haberfeld and Cohen, 1998). Despite the equal payment law Israeli women earn less than men for working in the same occupation (cf.…”

“…Kraus, 2002;Van der Lippe and van Dijk, 2002;Yaish and Kraus, 2003). A dramatic increase in women's labour force participation has also occurred among mothers with young children (Hofferth and Curtin, 2006).…”

“…First, students of labour market processes consistently show that even when differences in human resources between men and women are held constant, and after compositional differences between the genders are controlled for, ample differences between men's and women's measurable returns to labour force participation remain unexplained (cf. Kraus, 2002;Yaish and Kraus, 2003). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this approach rests on the assumption that the labour market is made of one homogeneous entity, and that the same 'rule of the market' applies across it.…”