Content area
Full Text
Introduction
In recent times, Trinidad and Tobago performed relatively well in the global indices measuring disparity between female and male in the areas of health, empowerment and economic activity. In all, two main rankings considered by policy makers are the Gender Inequality Index and the Global Gender Gap. The Gender Inequality Index looks at reproductive health, empowerment and economic activity. In the latest ranking (2012), Trinidad and Tobago was positioned 50 out of 148 countries. The Global Gender Gap examines the gender gap on the areas of health (life expectancy, etc.), access to education, economic participation (salaries, job type and seniority) and political engagement. Trinidad and Tobago ranks 36 out 136 countries in the 2013 report. While there are many positive sentiments emanating from these reports, there is still the perception that in Trinidad and Tobago a significant differential exists in the wages earned by women vs men due to discrimination. This paper seeks to investigate the veracity of this perception using the traditional tools of the literature, namely, the Mincerian human wage capital equations and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. Notably, as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women as well as other conventions and protocols, the government has moved over the years to eliminate legislation that was discriminatory against women in the workforce. In addition, the institution and subsequent amendments of the Minimum Wage Act does not allow for discrimination in the remuneration of men and women. Further, in Trinidad and Tobago, the government service is one of the largest employers, and remuneration received depends on the classification of occupation within the public service.
The paper is structured in the following format: the next section provides a brief overview of recent studies from the voluminous literature on the gender wage gap, and this is followed by a review of the developments in the labour market in Trinidad and Tobago related to participation and wages. In the empirical section, the results generated from the investigation are presented and the paper concludes with some recommendations for future work.
Literature review
Over the years there have been numerous studies examining the phenomena of the gender wage gap, often from the perspective of the individual country. Such studies seek...