Gender and ethnic labour market differentials in Britain. An analysis using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey

This Thesis consists of six Chapters. Chapter I provides an overview of the economic theories of discrimination, summarises the existing empirical work with respect to gender and ethnicity wage differentials, presents a discussion on equal opportunities policies, and highlights the merits of matched employer-employee data in explaining labour market differentials. Chapter 2 explains the design of the data, examines and interprets variables of interest and thoroughly looks at five aspects of the data that are of relevance to the Thesis. Chapter 3 focuses on firm-specific gender and ethnicity pay differentials. The empirical estimation reveals significant gender and ethnic pay gaps. A striking finding of this Chapter is that the firm-specific effects although significant and sizeable are not correlated with other variables that may act as indirect indicators of pay differentials. Chapter 4 focuses on gender and ethnicity job satisfaction differentials. We find that women are more satisfied than men in relation to four different aspects of job satisfaction (influence over the job, amount of pay, sense of achievement and respect from supervisors). An interesting difference with respect to the female results is that ethnic minority workers although are more satisfied than white employees with the influence, achievement and respect they get from their jobs are not satisfied with pay. Chapter 5 focuses on gender and ethnicity differentials relating to the receipt of employer provided off-the-job training. Female employees have a significantly higher probability of training incidence than men. This differential disappears when we include a measure of workplace segregation. There is no significant gender differential upon training intensity. Ethnic minority employees face a significant disadvantage only with respect to the incidence of training. We also find that equal opportunities policies have a positive and significant impact only on female employees. Chapter 6 concludes by reviewing the Thesis, providing policy implications and setting up the agenda for future work.