Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring) 1994
Doiron, Denise J., and W. Craig Riddell. 1994. "The Impact of Unionization on Male-Female: Earnings Differences in Canada." Journal of Human Resources 29(2):504-534.
The impact of unionization on male-female earnings differences in Canada is analyzed using data spanning 1981 through 1988, a period in which the male-female unionization gap narrowed considerably. gender differences in union density, union wages, and nonunion wages are decomposed into characteristics-related and discriminatory components. We find that the drop in the gender unionization gap prevented an increase of 7 percent in the overall wage differential between men and women. Also, male0female earnings differences in the nonunion sector make a substantially larger contribution to the gender gap than do those in the union sector.
Denise J. Doiron and W. Craig Riddell are professors of economics at the University of British Columbia. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Donner Foundation February 1991 Workshop and December 1991 Conference on the Economic Well-Being of Women and Children, both held at the University of Minnesota Industrial Relations Center. The authors thank Keir Armstrong and Woo Yung Kim for research assistance and Bill Even, David Green, Jon Kesselman, Robert Moffitt, Alice Nakamura, Chris Robinson, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in August of 1994 through August of 1997 from the authors at the department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X