Abstract
Background Women’s educational attainment and their generation of value through education has increased the prospects for achieving economic equality between men and women. However, women continue to earn lower wages than men, reflecting growing inequality in several countries. Therefore, the objective of the study is to estimate the impact of education on the gender wage gap in Peru over the period 2017-2021. Methods Quantitative, explanatory study aimed at identifying the impact of education on the gender wage gap in Peru during the period 2017-2021. The research design is non-experimental and uses a time series that analyses the influence of the latent variable of education on the gender wage gap. This is a continuous variable to estimate the Tobit model. Results The results show that the gender gap in Peru exhibited a decreasing trend between men and women during the period 2017-2020, with an average reduction of 10% until 2020 due to the health crisis. The highest average salary was achieved by men in 2019, reaching S/2289.97 soles, while women reached an average salary of S/1368.85 soles. In the post-pandemic scenario for 2021, the gender gap increased by 3%, with men earning an average salary of S/1999.63 soles and women earning an average salary of S/1281.16 soles. The analysis from 2017-2021 shows that years of education had a positive impact on the gender wage gap in Peru based on the Tobit model estimation. Conclusions During the analysis period of 2017-2021, years of education had a positive impact on the gender wage gap in Peru, with the greatest impact occurring during the health crisis. The probability of women’s incomes improving with an increase in years of education was 2.35%, while for men, the highest impact was in 2018, with a probability of income improvement of 2.16% in terms of marginal effect.