Gender Wage Differences and Part-time Work in Austria

In Austria, only 8 percent of male workers but 45 percent of female workers are employed on a part-time basis (EU 27: 10 and 33 percent, respectively). At the same time, Austria has one of the highest gender pay gaps in the EU 27. Using EU-SILC data for the private sector in Austria, we investigate the role and impact of the unequal distribution of paid working hours between men and women on the gender pay gap. Our main results indicate that the hourly gross wage of part-time women falls slightly below that of full-time women. The net hourly wage of women working part-time actually exceeds that of women working full-time. The same is true for men. Moreover, part-time women are positively selected: their observed and unobserved characteristics positively influence both the probability of working part-time and the hourly wage. Depending on the number of hours worked per week, the selection effect accounts for 10 to 18 percent of the gender wage gap. Hence disregarding the selection effect gives rise to an overestimation of the wage differential between men and women.