The educational gender gap has closed or reversed in many countries.
But what of gendered labour market inequalities? Using micro-level census
data for some 40 countries, the authors examine the labour force participation
gap between men and women, the “marriage gap” between married and single
women’s participation, and the “motherhood gap” between mothers’ and nonmothers’
participation. They find significant heterogeneity among countries in
terms of the size of these gaps, the speed at which they are changing, and the
relationships between them and the educational gap. But counterfactual regression
analysis shows that the labour force participation gap remains largely unexplained
by the other gaps.