Gender wage gap in emerging markets and developing economies

Paper Details

Authors: Herrera D.Y.; Mora J.J.

DOI: 10.18046/j.estger.2025.177.7513

Journal: Estudios Gerenciales

Year: 2026

Publisher: Universidad Icesi

Document Type: Article

Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access

Cited by: 0

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed a rapid expansion of empirical work on gender wage gaps. This meta-analysis synthesizes 40 estimates for emerging and developing economies (1999-2021) using random-effects models, tests for publication selection, and a restricted maximum likelihood meta-regression with country-year covariates. The pooled underlying proportional gap is 28.5% in favor of men, with pronounced regional variation (about 18% in Latin America, 43% in Asia, and 30% in emerging Europe). Cross-study variation is systematically related to gender development, female unemployment, and article publication year. © 2025 Universidad ICESI. Published by Universidad Icesi, Colombia. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Keywords

developing countries; gender wage gap; meta-analysis; publication bias

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