Women in developed economies have made major advancements in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This article documents long-run trends in female employment, working hours, and relative wages for a wide cross section of developed economies. It reviews existing work on the factors driving gender convergence, and novel perspectives on remaining gender gaps. Finally, the article emphasizes the interplay between gender trends and the evolution of the industry structure. Based on a shift-share decomposition, it shows that the growth in the service share can explain at least half of the overall variation in female hours, both over time and across countries.

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Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo

1 October 2016

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Annual Review of Economics 8(1) , pp.405-434, 2016

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DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115329

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115329

This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour markets programme.

This publication comes under the following theme: Gender in the labour market