WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR GENDER INCOME INEQUALITY? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM VIETNAMESE SMALL AND MEDIUM MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES

This paper examines the gender income inequality between male and female workers in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition approach to a dataset obtained from a unique employee survey during the 2011-2015 period, we find that the gender income gap (7.4%) in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is smaller than the common gendered wage gap (10%) in the general workforce in Vietnam. Our results reveal that education and experience play less important roles in the workers’ earning in SMEs where education and high skills may not highly demanded. The gender wage gap is mostly unexplained by observed factors or endowments in our models. The largest part of the gendered wage gap is still mystified which may include gender discrimination that is unobservable. Overall, the gender income inequality in the sector in Vietnam is not as worse as seen in higher skilled sectors as well as in many other countries.