The Effects of Occupational Segregation on Gender Wage Gap in Kenya

Abstract

Occupational segregation has been identified as a primary cause of the gender wage gap. In this line, this paper aimed at investigating the effects of occupational segregation on gender wage gap in Kenya using the 2019 Quarterly Labour Force Survey for period January to March. The preliminary findings were that male workers are paid approximately 58.88979 percent more than female employees. In addition, the study measured the extent of the Occupational classification using the Duncan index and found that 42.73 percent of women need to change occupation for occupational integration to occur. Further, using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression there was a negative relationship between the log female wage and the proportion of women in employment. These results confirmed the theory of crowding model used. However, based on the findings inter occupational segregation does not significantly impact on wage since only 1.89 percent of it explained the gender wage gap. Thereby, focus on narrowing the gender wage gap should be on the impact of intra occupational segregation on gender income and or the unexplainable which are attributable to discrimination and culture/norm values.