What is it about?
Within gendered patterns of labour supply decisions, marriage and children may present either a wage premium or penalty to women attracted to self-employment in the quest for flexibility of working hours. For men, SE may be a more voluntary choice, offering rewards based on a culture of entrepreneurship. This article investigates gender differences in Nigeria, in the impact of marriage and children on location in the self or waged employment sector, and on income from work. Findings show that the pay structure varies across employment sectors — waged and self-employed, and the determinants of employment sector vary by gender and family roles. Differences in human capital investment and geopolitical zones also need to be considered. The estimates in the study reveal that there is a marriage premium for both males and females in the waged labour market, but partial support for Becker’s (1991) gender-based household specialization model in terms of the relative incidence of self-employment. There is a wage penalty for married women with children in the paid-employment labour market, but motherhood is also negatively associated with income levels for self-employed women. We also find a fatherhood penalty for paid-employed men. Nevertheless, overall, the gender gap is higher in relatively less regulated self-employment compared to the more regulated paid employment labour market. Findings, therefore, offer some policy inputs but also suggest the need for further research into the causes of the gender pay gap in self and paid employment, and thus into the overall wage gap in Nigeria that inhibits women’s labour market participation and welfare.
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Why is it important?
How do marriage and parenthood affect labour market location and the gender pay gap? In Nigeria, as in other parts of Africa and Asia, this question is complicated by the divide between the formal labour market and self-employment. This divide is linked to the differential effects of education on the gender wage gap, and also to gendered wage differences between geopolitical zones within the country.
Perspectives
The study adds the existence of a large and growing informal sector to the analysis. It examines whether the marriage premium and the household specialisation model are found to apply in self-employment. It explores the impact of parenthood for both men and women, in both the waged and self-employed sectors, in order to ascertain whether the pay gap attributable to gender paid employment.
Ikechukwu Nwaka
Girne American University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Gender wage differences in Nigerian self and paid employment: Do marriage and children matter?, The Economic and Labour Relations Review, November 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1035304616677655.
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