Being a woman in an ICT job: an analysis of the gender pay gap and discrimination in Spain

• Author: Pilar Laguna Sánchez,Rosa Santero Sánchez,Mónica Segovia‐Pérez,Rosa Belén Castro Núñez
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12145

20 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:1

ISSN 1468-005X

Being a woman in an ICT job: an analysis of

the gender pay gap and discrimination in

Spain

Mónica Segovia‐Pérez , Rosa Belén Castro Núñez ,

Rosa Santero Sánchez and Pilar Laguna Sánchez

Despite policy initiatives aimed at promoting female access to

jobs, the information and communication technology (ICT) pro-

fessions have traditionally been largely monopolised by men. Seg-

regation, gendered stereotypes and environmental factors have a

clear impact on educational and professional choices, as well as

on working conditions. The spread of ICT to all economic activ-

ities has meant that ICT specialists are now to be found every-

where, not only in the ICT sector where many stereotypes related

to technical jobs persist. This work aims to analyse the gender

wage gap and discrimination in ICT professions, with the empha-

sis on how working in an ICT‐intensive industry might affect that

situation. The study uses the Spanish Earning Structure Survey

data for 2014, and applies wage decomposition techniques to the

wage distribution. The results show that female ICT professionals

face unfavorable working conditions, especially in highly quali-

ed jobs and in ICT‐intensive industries.

Keywords: gender pay gap, gender wage gap, wage discrim-

ination, women in ICT, male-dominated occupations, ICT

professionals, gender segregation, inequalities.

Mónica Segovia‐Pérez (monica.segovia@urjc.es) PhD in Sociology is an Associate Professor in the

Business Administration Department of Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid (Spain). Board of Di-

rectors of Mainstreaming Gender Studies Network in Human, Social and Legal Science. Her research

elds are gender issues as gender & technology or gender & tourism, in particular, glass ceiling,

leadership, working conditions, sociology, among others.

Rosa Belén Castro Núñez (belen.castro@urjc.es) PhD in Economics is an Associate Professor in the

Applied Economic Department of Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid (Spain). She is a member of

Mainstreaming Gender Studies Network in Human, Social and Legal Science and the Spanish Associ-

ation of Labor Economics. Her research elds are quantitative methods, labor economics, in particular,

gender issues, and social economy.

Rosa Santero Sánchez (rosa.santero@urjc.es) PhD in Economics is an Associate Professor in the Ap-

plied Economic Department in the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid (Spain). She is a member of

Mainstreaming Gender Studies Network in Human, Social and Legal Science and the Spanish Asso-

ciation of Labor Economics. Her speciality area is gender and labour market, and other topics about

economic, social and environmental analysis.

Pilar Laguna Sánchez (pilar.laguna@urjc.es) holds a PhD in Finance from the University Complutense,

Madrid, and she is an Associate Professor in the Business Administration Department of Rey Juan

Carlos University in Madrid (Spain). She is a member of the International Women Forum. Her current

areas of interest are focused on applied entrepreneurship, small business nance, female leadership

and teacher innovation.

Gender pay gap in ICT jobs 21

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Introduction

The gender wage gap is a well‐known phenomenon. Numerous studies and organisa-

tions have conrmed that women are paid less than men (UN Women, 2015). This is

partly due to segregation and gender stereotypes; women are linked to traditionally

‘female’ occupations, and these are associated with inferior working conditions and

lower pay (Prokos etal., 2009; Stockdale and Nadler, 2013).

The ICT and digital sectors present specic obstacles for women. Jobs related to

technology and engineering have traditionally been male dominated; indeed, ICT oc-

cupations and the ICT‐intensive economic sectors have been used as paradigmatic ex-

amples of male‐dominated elds, in which the impact of stereotypes is most

pronounced, posing access barriers to women and setting obstacles in the path of their

development (Sharp etal., 2012; Hari, 2016). Women in these sectors are primarily per-

ceived as women, rather than as ICT workers or engineers (Faulkner, 2009; Hatmaker,

2013); this has an impact on the kinds of positions they occupy and on their promotion

within organisations, via horizontal and vertical occupational segregation (Valenduc,

2011). Consequently, they are more likely to receive lower salaries than their male

peers (Iglesias‐Fernández et al., 2010; Belgorodskiy etal., 2012; Shen, 2016; European

Commission, 2018a).

Various international organisations, as well as the private sector, are aware of the

traditional male overrepresentation in the ICT sector and have pointed out the desira-

bility of attracting more women to this industry, as women have ‘untapped potential

for the industry’ (Valenduc, 2011). This perception has intensied as a consequence of

the fourth industrial revolution, the so‐called industry 4.0 phenomenon, which has

renewed the level of interest in robotics, automation, and intelligence of products and

systems (Schneider, 2018), and has focused attention on the major role of ICT in the

future of work, including the risk of its worsening the existing gender imbalances

(International Labour Ofce, 2018). Indeed, the recent technology hype has increased

the pressure to address the low participation of women in ICT sectors and professions.

In the European Union, in 2015, tertiary graduates in ICT elds accounted for only 3.6

per cent of all graduates, of which only 19 per cent were women. This gap translates

into the professional sphere: in 2015, of all ICT specialist workers, only 16.1 per cent

were women, lower than the 22.2 per cent registered in 2005 (European Commission,

2018a). This gap is severe throughout the EU, but there are differences among coun-

tries (European Commission, 2018a), with different economic and social contexts. In

Spain, 22.5 per cent of ICT degrees are awarded to women (Instituto Nacional de

Estadística, 2011) and only 17.3 per cent of the workforce in ICT occupations were

women (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2018). As pointed out by Anker (1998), data

indicates that the existence of segregation in the ICT sector, as discriminatory social

norms or indirect discrimination (e.g. job attributes, jobs conditions), institutional or

organisational factors (Belgorodskiy etal., 2012), and stereotype barriers might lead to

differences in labor conditions in different countries. Thus, the study of different na-

tional and cultural contexts is crucial for addressing the gender imbalances that char-

acterise the ICT industries and professions (European Commission, 2018a).

In this context, this article aims to examine the gender pay gap and the degree of

gender wage discrimination in ICT occupations, focusing on whether working in an

ICT‐intensive economic sector (male‐dominated) or in other sectors (with diverse situ-

ations) might affect the degree of discrimination, reecting the differences in working

environments in those sectors. In particular, the research undertakes an analysis of the

gender pay gap and pay discrimination along wage distribution. It focuses on the ex-

tent to which the pay gap can be justied by differences in human capital endowment,

and the extent to which it cannot, and instead may be attributed to gender‐based

discrimination.

The article thus makes a two‐fold contribution to the literature on gender inequality

in ICT occupations, which remains an understudied eld of research (Valenduc, 2011).

First, the distinction between ICT and non‐ICT economic sectors constitutes an