Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology

SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH METHODS
ASSIGNMENT 1

Submitted To: Amber Gillani

Student Name: Samar Rana

Reg. Number: 1817172

Section: BSSS 6(A)

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 Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology
SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION
STATEMENT: How discrimination, societal norms, and other forces affect women’s occupational
choices and their pay in Pakistan.
INTRODUCTION:
Women are significantly under-represented in Pakistan’s labor force, despite their huge
contribution to daily life. Where women are employed they face a significant gender pay gap,
alongside other forms of discrimination which limit their potential.

All around the world women earn less than men. Women are paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to
men (Hegewisch and DuMonthier 2016). Globally, the gender pay gap is estimated to be 22.9 per
cent; in other words, women earn on average 77.1 per cent of what men earn. The 2016
International Labor Organization (ILO) Global Wage Report revealed large variations of pay
inequality around the world and also identified that inequality levels vary widely by sector. This
report sets out to examine pay inequality in Pakistan and, in particular, in the country’s garment
sector.

Global pay report highlights that, despite Pakistan’s broad guarantee of equality for both women
and men, the existing legal frameworks fail to fully provide the right to equal pay for work of equal
value. Cultural barriers and gender stereotypes valuing men as breadwinners and women as
homemakers are prevalent. While this is changing in large urban centers, major obstacles to women
entering the workforce persist. A major factor is the lack of safe, affordable and accessible
transport facilities; these are only provided in some of the largest exporting enterprises. The lack of
suitable, affordable childcare is also a major disincentive in a society that places the burden of
child-rearing almost exclusively on women.

Analysis of Pakistan’s Labor Force Surveys for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 show a gender pay gap
of 26 per cent across Pakistan’s workforce without taking into account differences in workers’
characteristics. However, in the garment sector, Pakistan’s largest manufacturing industry and a
significant employer of women, it rises to 33 per cent.

Critics of this widely cited statistic claim it is not solid evidence of economic discrimination against
women because it is unadjusted for characteristics other than gender that can affect earnings, such
as years of education, work experience, and location. Many of these skeptics contend that the
gender wage gap is driven not by discrimination, but instead by voluntary (Blau and Kahn 2016).
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 Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology
SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
To isolate the impact of overt gender discrimination such as a woman being paid less than her male
coworker for doing the exact same job, it is typical to adjust for such characteristics. But these
adjusted statistics can radically understate the potential for gender discrimination to suppress
women’s earnings. This is because gender discrimination does not occur only in employers’ pay-
setting practices. It can happen at every stage leading to women’s labor market outcomes.

Take one key example: occupation of employment. While controlling for occupation does indeed
reduce the measured gender wage gap, the sorting of genders into different occupations can it is
driven (at least in part) by discrimination. By the time a woman earns her first dollar, her
occupational choice is the culmination of years of education, guidance by mentors, expectations set
by those who raised her, hiring practices of firms, and widespread norms and expectations about
work–family balance held by employers, co-workers, and society. In other words, even though
women disproportionately enter lower-paid, female-dominated occupations, this decision is shaped
by discrimination, societal norms, and other forces beyond women’s control.

Girls can be steered toward gender-normative careers from a very early age. At a time when
parental influence is key, parents are often more likely to expect their sons, rather than their
daughters, to work in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields, even when
their daughters perform at the same level in mathematics (OECD 2015).

Those seeking to downplay the gender wage gap often suggest that women who work hard enough
and reach the apex of their field will see the full fruits of their labor. In reality, however, the gender
wage gap is wider for those with higher earnings. Again, this large gender pay gap between the
highest earners is partially driven by gender bias. Harvard economist Claudia Goldin (2014) posits
that high-wage firms have adopted pay-setting practices that disproportionately reward individuals
who work very long and very particular hours. This means that even if men and women are equally
productive per hour, individuals disproportionately men, who are more likely to work excessive
hours and be available at particular off-hours, are paid more highly (Hersch and Stratton 2002;
Goldin 2014; Landers, Rebitzer, and Taylor 1996). Pakistan’s legislative and policy framework
contains no general prohibition on pay inequality, save for in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where recent
legislation has introduced the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. Additionally, some
legislative measures designed to protect women from excessive hours and night work have the
unintended consequence of making women less attractive to employers, who require a flexible

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 Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology
SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

workforce in an order-driven industry. This research explains why gender occupational sorting is
itself part of the discrimination women face, examines how this sorting is shaped by societal and
economic forces, and explains that gender pay gaps are present even within occupations in
Pakistan.

Key points include:

 Gender pay gaps within occupations persist, even after accounting for years of experience,
hours worked, and education.
 Decisions women make about their occupation and career do not happen in a vacuum they are
also shaped by society.

 The long hours required by the highest-paid occupations can make it difficult for women to
succeed, since women tend to shoulder the majority of family caretaking duties.

 Many professions dominated by women are low paid, and professions that have become
female-dominated have become lower paid.

Abstract of related research:

Studies of the gender pay gap are seldom able to simultaneously account for the range of
alternative putative mechanisms underlying it. Using CloudResearch, an online microtask platform
connecting employers to workers who perform research-related tasks, we examine whether gender
pay discrepancies are still evident in a labor market characterized by anonymity, relatively
homogeneous work, and flexibility. For 22,271 Mechanical Turk workers who participated in
nearly 5 million tasks, we analyze hourly earnings by gender, controlling for key covariates which
have been shown previously to lead to differential pay for men and women. On average, women’s
hourly earnings were 10.5% lower than men’s. Several factors contributed to the gender pay gap,
including the tendency for women to select tasks that have a lower advertised hourly pay. This
study provides evidence that gender pay gaps can arise despite the absence of overt discrimination,
labor segregation, and inflexible work arrangements, even after experience, education, and other
human capital factors are controlled for. Findings highlight the need to examine other possible
causes of the gender pay gap. Potential strategies for reducing the pay gap on online labor markets
are also discussed.

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