The Gender Wage Gap among Ph.D. Holders: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on the gender wage gap by empirically analyzing those workers who hold the highest possible educational qualification, i.e., a Ph.D. The analysis relies on recent Italian cross-sectional data collected through a survey on the employment conditions of Ph.D. holders. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis and quantile decomposition analysis are carried out, and the selection of Ph.D. holders into employment and STEM/non-STEM fields of specialization is taken into account. Findings suggest that a gender gap in hourly wages exists among Ph.D. holders, with sizeable differences by sector of employment and field of specialization.

Postgraduate education and job mismatch in Italy: Does migration help?

“…Moreover, they are less likely to be satisfied with their job. Confirming past evidence (Alfano, Cicatiello, et al, 2019; Croce & Ghignoni, 2015), we find significant gender discrimination, with females having less favourable job opportunities than males. Unexpectedly, being Married and having Children do not play a role.…”

“…To be coherent with the European classification, the 14 fields are aggregated into three groups (Science and medicine; Physics and engineering; Social sciences), which are also those on which calls for research projects in all European countries are focussed. For these reasons and in line with previous studies (i.e., Alfano, Cicatiello, et al, 2019;Alfano, D'Uva, et al, 2019;Gaeta, 2015;Parenti et al, 2020), we adopt the European classification. However, we also ran the regressions with the 14 categories, and the main results were unchanged.…”

Glass ceiling or sticky floor? Evidence from a distributional approach of the gender wage gap among PhD holders in South Korea

“…These results are similar to those found in another recent analysis that focused on PhD holders. For example, the rates of this unexplained gap are in line with the findings of Schulze (2015) for the UK academic sector and Alfano et al (2021) for Italy. In the case of South Korea, Park (2018), who employed Heckman's two‐step approach to correct for sample selection bias, detected an unexplained wage gap of 41.9 per cent among PhD holders.…”

“…Previous studies on PhD holders have emphasised the glass ceiling (Schulze 2015; Alfano et al 2021), but this study is the first to analyse the distributional patterns of the gender gap with homogeneous PhD holders in South Korea, confirming both limited glass ceilings and obvious sticky floors. Although a number of previous studies have suggested that higher education mitigates gender discrimination, our analysis challenges this view (Piazzalunga 2018).…”

“…She reports stark differences in wage patterns between the fields of study and a strongly increasing coefficient effect for the higher percentiles. Alfano et al (2021) report that a significant gender gap in hourly wages exists among Italian PhD holders, with sizeable differences by employment sector and field of specialisation. They found a glass ceiling in both science/engineering majors and humanities/ social science majors, with a larger magnitude observed in the latter.…”