The Long Way to Gender Equality: Gender Pay Differences in Germany, 1871-2021: halshs-04424048

Abstract

This paper provides the _rst time series of the gender earnings ratio for the full-time employed workforce in Germany since the 1870s and compares Ger- many's path with the Swedish and U.S. cases. The industrialization period yielded slow advances in economic gender relations due to women's delayed inclusion in the industrial workforce. The _rst half of the 20th century exhib- ited a marked leap. In Germany, the gender earnings ratio increased from 47% in 1913 to 58% in 1937. Similar increases are visible in Sweden and the United States. In all three countries, the interplay between increased women's edu- cation and increased returns to education due to the expanding white-collar sector fueled pay convergence. Yet in Germany, women's educational catch-up was slowed due to the dominance of on-the-job vocational training. German women's migration from low-paid agricultural work to higher-paid white-collar jobs was predominantly increasing the gender pay ratio. The postwar period brought diverging developments between Germany, Sweden and the United States due to di_erent economic conditions and policy action.