An Empirical Investigation Of Wage Discrimination Among Construction Workers In India

Abstract

One the most important sector for providing the direct and indirect employment is construction sector. The construction sector has the largest number of unorganised labourers in India next only to agricultural sector and provides employment to about 33 million people. Gender discrimination in our social structure continues to favor males over females, trickling down to various sectors of society, such as the workplace. The gender wage gap is a tangible result of such inequality and is measured as “the difference between male and female earning expressed as a percentage of male earnings” (OECD, 2011). Wage differential refers to differences in wage rates due to the location of working place, hours of work, working conditions, type of project, nature of work site, or other factors. It may be the difference in wages between workers with different skills working in the same industry or workers with similar skills working in different construction industries or regions. In Indian labour market the earning and wages are considerable rises but the problem of wage differentiation is the burning issue prevailing, and this problem is much prevalent in the unorganized market. The present study focuses on the issue of wage differentiation in the similar construction work on working site in Chennai Metropolitan of India. It explores gender wage gaps among construction workers in India, along the entire wage distribution to see “what happens where”. The Data required for the study have been collected from both the primary and secondary sources. This paper analyses the issue of gender parity in wages by focusing on the evolution of male-female wage gaps for an emerging economy, India, and decomposes the gaps to understand the patterns of gender-based labour market discrimination.