Gender wage gaps and job mobility in Spain.

Equal treatment for men and women is an important objective of labour policy in the European Union, largely because there is ample evidence of gender discrimination in the wages of men and women, which are on an average higher for male workers. Research on male-female wage differentials provides evidence of a substantial wage differential favouring men after adjusting for human capital and personal characteristics such as education, age, job tenure, and labour force intermittency. However, few studies take into account the role that job mobility plays in this differential, despite its demonstrated importance in explaining the earnings profile of workers. This paper estimates gender wage differentials for workers who switch jobs and those who keep them in order to see whether job mobility enlarges or reduces the gender gap. The study uses microdata relative to Spanish workers gathered from the Households Panel Study (1994-1997), conducted by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]