Publication: Gender Gap in Earnings in Vietnam: Why Do Vietnamese Women Work in Lower Paid Occupations?
Loading...
Files in English
1,103 downloads
Other Files
9,432 downloads
Published
2018-03
ISSN
Date
2019-04-02
Editor(s)
Abstract
Vietnam has achieved important progress in closing the gender gap in education and increasing women’s labor force participation. However, are women’s labor market opportunities on par with those of men? We analyze the gender earnings gap and establish that women’s propensity to work in lower paid occupations is a major culprit in the emergence of a gender earnings gap. We provide suggestive evidence of why women choose to work in lower paid occupations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Chowdhury, Iffat; Johnson, Hillary; Mannava, Aneesh; Perova, Elizaveta. 2018. Gender Gap in Earnings in Vietnam: Why Do Vietnamese Women Work in Lower Paid Occupations?. East Asia and Pacific Gender Policy Brief;No. 2. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31485 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Gender Gap in Earnings in Vietnam(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05)Differences in earnings between male and female workers persist in developed and developing countries despite a narrowing of gender gaps in educational attainment over the past half-century. This paper examines the gender wage gap in Vietnam and shows that a nontrivial part of the gap is associated with occupational sorting. The paper considers three explanations for why occupational sorting emerges. First, it explores whether women sort into occupations with better nonmonetary characteristics, such as paid leave and shorter hours. The data from Labor Force Surveys support this hypothesis. Second, it checks if occupational sorting among the adult labor force is driven by social norms about gender roles learned and internalized at an early age. To do so, the paper checks for evidence of sorting in the aspirations of 12-year-old children. Specifically, the analysis simulates what the gender wage gap would be if boys and girls pursued the occupations they aspired to at age 12, and the distribution of salaries remained unchanged. The paper does not find support for the hypothesis that gender norms drive occupational sorting by inducing aspirational sorting at an early age. Finally, for individuals with higher education, the paper checks if occupational sorting occurs during the school-to-work transition, when women face higher barriers in finding a job in their field of study. The analysis does not find evidence to support this last hypothesis. Overall, the findings suggest that in Vietnam gender-specific preferences for nonmonetary job characteristics play a key role in the emergence of occupational sorting.Publication Gender Streaming in Vietnam(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-01)We examine the gender wage gap in Vietnam and show that a non-trivial part of the gap is associated with occupational sorting. We consider three explanations for why occupational sorting emerges. First, we explore whether occupational sorting is driven by gender differences in preferences for non-monetary characteristics of the jobs. First, we explore whether occupational sorting is driven by gender differences in preferences for non-monetary characteristics of jobs and find that there are indeed differences between the genders in preferences for having a formal contract, insurance, paid leave and shorter hours, which may induce women to forego monetary compensation for these characteristics. Second, we check if occupational sorting among the adult labor force is driven by social norms about gender roles learned and internalized at an early age. To do so we check for evidence of sorting in the aspirations of 12-year-old children by simulating what the gender wage gap would be if boys and girls pursued the occupations they aspire to at 12. And third, for women with higher education, we check if occupational sorting occurs during the school to work transition - if women are less likely to find jobs within their field of study upon graduation. We do not find support for either the second or third hypotheses. Overall, our findings suggest that in Vietnam gender specific preferences for non-monetary job characteristics play a key role in emergence of occupational sorting.Publication Could Childcare Services Improve Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Indonesia?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-03)In this brief, the authors explore whether lack of access to childcare is a constraint to female labor force participation (LFP) in Indonesia, a country where female LFP lags far below the regional average. Using household and labor force survey data, we find that low female LFP is linked to unsatisfied childcare needs - after childbirth, lack of access to informal childcare is associated with a longer absence from the workforce for women and a switch into less lucrative occupations or unpaid family work.Publication Does Access to Preschool Increase Women’s Employment?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-07)Female labor force participation (FLFP) in Indonesia lags behind other countries in the region. Building on previous work that shows that unmet childcare needs are associated with low FLFP in Indonesia, here, we look at the impact of childcare availability on FLFP. The findings suggest that an additional public preschool per 1,000 children raises the employment of mothers of age-eligible children by 13 percent.Publication Childcare and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Lower-and Middle-Income Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-07)Twenty-two studies from lower- and middle-income countries rigorously tested if an increase in access to childcare improved mothers’ labor force participation or earnings. All but one study found at least some positive impact on mothers’ labor force participation and related outcomes resulting from access to care, an increase in care hours, or a reduction in the cost of care. The results of this review are encouraging; childcare can help improve female labor market outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Viet Nam 2045(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-22)While Viet Nam’s institutions may not have the forms that exist in other countries, it is the functions of institutions, rather than specific forms, that are important. This study adopts a framework based on the functions of institutions in the quest to support an evolving role of the state: market-creating, market-stabilizing, market-regulating, market-complementing, and market-legitimizing institutions, as well as the institutions for a capable and accountable state. Part I of this study will first survey the landscape of institutions in Viet Nam according to this framework. Some institutions may be essential for growth in the long term, but do not seem to be binding constraints to Viet Nam’s growth. Others are more foundational and will be the subject of deeper dives in Parts II and III of this report: those for a growth-supporting state (market-complementing and market-regulating) and those for the state’s capability to deliver with efficiency and accountability. This emphasis is also consistent with the experience of countries that escaped the middle-income trap—many of which did so by improving the predictability of the implementation of laws, by boosting quality and quantity of public investment, and by improving the quality and motivation of their public administration.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Vietnam Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-07-01)Like most countries in the world, Vietnam is increasingly seeing its development affected by climate change. With a coastline of 3,260 kilometers that includes major cities and production sites, Vietnam is highly exposed to sea-level rise. Climate change impacts on the Vietnamese economy and national welfare are already significant—about 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020—and they are expected to escalate rapidly even if greater efforts are made to mitigate future climate change around the world. Vietnam has historically had very low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but over the past two decades, it has seen some of the fastest emissions growth rates in the world. From 2000 to 2015, as GDP per capita increased from $390 to $2,000, per capita emissions more than quadrupled. Vietnam’s GHG emissions are associated with toxic air pollution in many of its cities today, with implications for health and labor productivity. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021 (COP26), the Prime Minister made several commitments, including an ambitious target of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050. Vietnam’s increased attention to climate change and the environment reflects the growing economic costs of resource depletion and climate impacts, which have already started to harm trade and investment— two key drivers of the nation’s robust growth and job creation in recent decades. Vietnam now faces critical questions about how to respond to climate change: How intensively should it work to adapt to previous and predicted damages caused by climate change, given the uncertainty of global mitigation efforts? How much will it cost to reduce GHG emissions? How can the private sector be mobilized to help achieve Vietnam’s climate goals? Are there trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation investments? Are there trade-offs between economic growth, poverty reduction, and climate action, and how can they be managed? Which sectors and regions should be prioritized? What are the distributional implications of a low-carbon, climate-resilient growth path? The Vietnam Country and Climate Development Report (CCDR) investigates these questions. One of the first in a series of country-level diagnostics produced by the World Bank Group (WBG) under its 2021–2025 Climate Change Action Plan, the CCDR examines the adaptation and mitigation challenges faced by Vietnam. It pays special attention to policy trade-offs and provides recommendations to help policy makers prioritize among a range of options, recognizing uncertainties about future climate change impacts and the availability of technology and financing.Publication World Bank East Asia and the Pacific Economic Update, October 2024: Jobs and Technology(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-07)East Asia and the Pacific, seen in the context of the world economy, stands out as a paragon of development. Despite the recent ravages of the pandemic and the persistent tensions of geopolitics, the region is growing at stably high rates and the benefits are widely shared. But compared to its own past and potential, the region’s economic performance is less impressive. Growth is still below pre-pandemic rates, except in Indonesia, and output has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels in several countries, especially in the Pacific. This Economic Update highlights three key developments: shifting regional growth dynamics as China’s growth slows, changing trade patterns due to global tensions, and the impact of technologies such as robots, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms on jobs. The report calls for productivity-enhancing structural reforms to strengthen domestic growth drivers through; deeper international trade agreements to foster more open and stable trade regimes; deeper technical, digital, and soft skills while addressing impediments to labor mobility, factor price distortions and expanding social protection for workers in the digital informal economy to boost productivity and employment.