The impact of the occupations and economic activities on the gender wage gap using a counterfactual framework

This paper presents a methodology to estimate the individual gender wage gap as the difference between wages of the women and their counterfactuals defined by Coarsened Exact Matching. If the women show a higher wage than comparable men, then it is called positive gap. Using eight surveys between 1992 and 2009 for Chile, a stable average of 44% of women show positive gap. This group is considered interesting from the policy perspective because they can provide lessons to decrease the negative discrimination observed on women. Additional analysis shows that the occupations such as Managers, Professionals and Technicians and Associated Professionals always increase the positive gap. Finally, the most successful economic activity to increase the positive gap is Finance and Insurance Activities.