Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2024, 60(6): 577-601 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2024.032

Is There Really Unequal Pay for Equal Work Between Men and Women in the Czech Republic? Problems with the Decomposition of Wage Determinants

Petr Kužel ORCID...
Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

This study focuses on issues of the adjusted gender pay gap (AGPG) and problematises existing approaches to calculating this indicator, especially Eurostat’s methodology. It analyses the different factors and variables with which Eurostat and other authors work, noting flaws in their measurement methods. The unadjusted gender pay gap (GPG) is typically divided into explained and unexplained parts, with the latter interpreted as the effect of unequal pay for equal work. This study demonstrates why the unexplained part might be considerably smaller than reported by existing studies (typically at 14%–15% and 17% in the case of Eurostat). What is key to determining the size of the explained part of the GPG is what productive characteristics and how many of them are included in statistical model. Existing analyses have artificially increased the adjusted part of the GPG due to simplifications in their application. For example, as this study shows, substituting the category of total job experience with the category of age has a significant impact, along with several minor shifts in the statistical analysis. When combined, these shifts are responsible for the substantial overestimation of the adjusted GPG. This study aims to eliminate these flaws and provide a theoretical and descriptive account of the reasons behind the overestimation.

Keywords: unadjusted gender pay gap, adjusted gender pay gap, Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition, equal pay, discrimination, Czechia

Received: November 4, 2023; Revised: July 17, 2024; Accepted: September 3, 2024; Prepublished online: October 21, 2024; Published: January 13, 2025  Show citation

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Kužel, P. (2024). Is There Really Unequal Pay for Equal Work Between Men and Women in the Czech Republic? Problems with the Decomposition of Wage Determinants. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 60(6), 577-601. doi: 10.13060/csr.2024.032
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