Egalitarian but not Equal: Sectoral Wage Formation and Gendered Wage Differentials

Introduction

All over the globe, women in the work world receive, on average, 20% less than their male counterparts (United Nations, 2022). In countries explicitly committed to eliminating the gender pay gap (GPG), such as those in Europe, women still earn, on average, 13% less than men do (Eurostat, 2022). This is regardless of the fact that countries with persistent GPGs have deployed a strategic institutional measure to raise the wage floor of feminised work sectors and reduce the GPG – namely, collective bargaining.

Project Aim

The overall aim of WAGE is to theorise the gendered nature of collective bargaining by investigating the past, the unruly present, and the possible future of regulated collective bargaining processes in three key countries: Germany, Norway, and Sweden.

Research Design

Moreover, the project’s research design will involve gathering data at the sectoral level of the metal sector and nursing and will use ethnographic research methods.

Research Objectives

To realise its overall aim, WAGE will accomplish the following three research objectives:

1. Compare and synthesise existing histories of collective bargaining and the GPG in the three selected countries.
2. Uncover and analyse daily practices in collective bargaining rounds that result in wage increases in the male-dominated metal sector and the female-dominated nursing sector.
3. Document and explain how actors embedded in the male-dominated metal and the female-dominated nursing sector relate to the wage norm and sectoral gendered wage differentials.

Significance of the Study

Given the dearth of scholarship on the relationship between gendered wage differentials and collective bargaining processes from an inter-sectoral angle, this study will be the first to systematically use qualitative methods to explore the economic frontier between sectoral gendered wage differentials and collective wage formation, thereby contributing to the effort to achieve gender equity in practice.