Gender wage gap in the formal and informal sector in the COVID-19 crisis period, of the national labor market and the state of Coahuila

Abstract

One of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2015-2030 agenda establishes guaranteeing equal remuneration between women and men for work of equal value. This objective is taken up in the 2018-2024 nation project for Mexico. In the project, the Federal Government aims to eliminate inequality gaps between women and men, as well as the obstacles that women face in all areas. The objective of this research is to estimate the Gender Wage Gap in the formal and informal sector of the labor market of the country and the state of Coahuila in the period of the COVID-19 crisis, to observe the trend of wage differences in the period 2019 – 2022. Mincerian wage equations (1974) were estimated for each gender with data from the National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE), for subordinate workers. The variables considered the sector in which the employee works and the condition of the working day. The Gender Wage Gap was estimated using the Blinder and Oaxaca (1973) methodology, with selection bias correction (Heckman, 1979). It was observed that the Gender Wage Gap in the context of crisis generally tended to close, this was because in the formal and informal sector the salary difference for women tended to decrease in 2020, while in 2022, during the economic recovery the Gender Wage Gap returned to the parameters of 2019 both nationally and in the state of Coahuila.