[Paper Review] The Gender Pay Gap in China: Insights from a Discrimination Perspective

Wei Bai, Yan-Li Lee+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 19, 2022

Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences4 citations

TL;DR

This study analyzes the Chinese gender pay gap using resume data from over 10 million online job seekers in 2015, applying Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to isolate discrimination as a key driver. It finds that women earn only 71.57% of men’s pay on average, with 81.47% of the gap attributable to discrimination—especially higher among married women—highlighting the need for family-supportive policies beyond education initiatives.

ABSTRACT

Equal pay is an essential component of gender equality, one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Using resume data of over ten million Chinese online job seekers in 2015, we study the current gender pay gap in China. The results show that on average women only earned 71.57\% of what men earned in China. The gender pay gap exists across all age groups and educational levels. Contrary to the commonly held view that developments in education, economy, and a more open culture would reduce the gender pay gap, the fusion analysis of resume data and socio-economic data presents that they have not helped reach the gender pay equality in China. China seems to be stuck in a place where traditional methods cannot make further progress. Our analysis further shows that 81.47\% of the variance in the gender pay gap can be potentially attributed to discrimination. In particular, compared with the unmarried, both the gender pay gap itself and proportion potentially attributed to discrimination of the married are larger, indicating that married women suffer greater inequality and more discrimination than unmarried ones. Taken together, we suggest that more research attention should be paid to the effect of discrimination in understanding gender pay gap based on the family constraint theory. We also suggest the Chinese government to increase investment in family-supportive policies and grants in addition to female education.

Motivation & Objective

• To quantify the current gender pay gap in China using large-scale, real-world resume data.
• To disentangle the contributions of human capital differences and unexplained discrimination in the gender pay gap.
• To investigate how marital status influences the magnitude and sources of the gender pay gap.
• To evaluate whether rising education and economic development have reduced gender pay inequality in China.
• To inform policy by identifying the role of structural discrimination and family constraints in sustaining the pay gap.

Proposed method

• Resumes from 10,318,484 Chinese online job seekers in 2015 were collected from recruitment websites, with key variables including gender, age, education, work tenure, salary, and marital status.
• The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method was applied to log-transformed annual salaries to split the gender pay gap into explained (human capital) and unexplained (potential discrimination) components.
• The unexplained portion was interpreted as proxy for gender discrimination, assuming equal human capital between men and women.
• Socioeconomic data from the China Statistical Yearbook (2016) was merged with resume data to examine regional and structural influences on the pay gap.
• The analysis focused on a subset of 753,616 resumes with complete demographic and occupational information for deeper subgroup analysis.
• Z-standardization was applied to continuous variables, and categorical variables were treated as discrete predictors in regression models.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 To what extent does gender discrimination explain the gender pay gap in China’s labor market?
• RQ2 How does the gender pay gap vary across different educational levels and age groups in China?
• RQ3 Does marital status amplify the gender pay gap and the role of discrimination?
• RQ4 To what extent have rising education levels and economic development reduced the gender pay gap in China?
• RQ5 What policy interventions are most effective in reducing the gender pay gap, particularly in light of family constraints?

Key findings

• On average, women in China earned 71.57% of what men earned in 2015, indicating a significant gender pay gap of 28.43%.
• The unexplained portion of the pay gap—interpreted as potential gender discrimination—accounted for 81.47% of the total variance in the gender pay gap.
• The gender pay gap and the proportion of the gap due to discrimination were both larger for married individuals compared to unmarried individuals, indicating greater inequality for married women.
• The pay gap persisted across all age groups and educational levels, suggesting structural and systemic factors rather than individual career choices alone.
• Married women face higher levels of discrimination, implying that family responsibilities and societal expectations exacerbate pay inequality.
• The study concludes that despite rising education and economic development, these factors have not reduced the gender pay gap, indicating that discrimination remains a dominant barrier to equality.