Gender wage gap and international trade: Evidence from Turkey's manufacturing sector

Gender wage gap is a widely discussed issue in labor economics. This paper contributes to the literature on three fronts. First, the overall gender wage gap present in Turkey's manufacturing sector is analyzed using updated data from the years 2006, 2010, and 2014. Next, the effect of international trade on the gender wage gap is investigated. We first decompose the overall gender wage gap to its explained and unexplained components using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method. Afterward, we use both the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and OLS regression to compare the gender wage gap in the tradable and non-tradable sectors. Then each year is decomposed separately to analyze the gender wage gap over time. Our results show that there is a gender wage gap of 2.6% in Turkey's manufacturing sector due to discrimination. In addition, the regression results reveal that the gender wage gap in the tradable sectors is 3.3%, while in the non-tradable sectors it is 1.9%. The decomposition results show the gender wage gap in the tradable sectors to be 4.2%, while in the non-tradable sectors, it is 3.2%. Lastly, there has been an increase of the gender wage gap from 2006 to 2014. We conclude that, in contradiction to Becker's theory, the gender wage gap in Turkey's manufacturing sector is higher in the tradable sectors than in the non-tradable sectors.