Market and Home Production: Gender Differences

Several countries had an increase in female labour participation during the twentieth century. Even so, few of them can be proud of the conditions these women faced in dealing with family responsibilities and the labour market. This paper analyses the occupational distribution of men and women from 1978 to 2007 using the microdata of Pnad. It shows that women are entering traditional male occupations to a certain extent, but they retain traditionally female occupations almost at the same level of occupation as they did 30 years ago. Also, we provide a regression analysis with an Oaxaca decomposition that shows the decreasing gender wage gap, but its persistent value in the last decade. JEL Codes: J24, J31 and J71. † I would like to thank the excellent research assistance of Carolina Flores Gomes. Also, I acknowledge the financial support from CNPq (Productivity Research Fellowship #307513/2007-6)