Explaining the gender wage gap: Is culture the missing link?

Abstract

The topic of the gender wage gap has been an important research issue for several decades. While many have investigated reasons for the
persistence of a differential in the wages of men and women, none has successfully explained away the entire difference. The wage differential
is a global problem. Despite differences in political and economic make-up of countries all over the world, the gender wage gap is present. The
purpose of the paper is to examine the gender wage gap from an international perspective and to determine whether any pattern exists between
cultural dimensions of a country and the male-female wage differential. The paper will utilize the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede
(2001) to profile a country’s cultural status and compare those cultural dimensions to the gender wage gap.