Gender Differentials in Wage and Employment Opportunity in Urban Labor Market

The gender wage differentials in urban labor market were investigated according to the microcosmic-surveyed data in Jilin Province in 2007. It was found that the industry distribution of male-female employment structure is unbalanced, namely the employment opportunity is unequal as far as gender concerned. Firstly, Mincer Wage Equation was estimated for both male and female according to the microcosmic-surveyed data. Then the conditional average of gender wage differentials was decomposed by method of Oaxaca-Blinder. The results show that only 20.24% of the difference can be explained by individual characteristics, the rest 79.76% is unexplainable. At the same time, the coefficient of discrimination is 129%. Such results indicate that the discrimination is the main factor of wage differentials. Furthermore, the cluster was done on industries, and the distribution of the employment proportion and opportunity attainment in different industries for both male and female were investigated. The result shows that women are also in an inferior position, which proves that the gender discrimination in employment opportunities exists in urban labor market.