Do women evaluate their lower earnings still to be fair? Findings on the contented female worker paradox examining the role of occupational contexts in 27 European countries

Abstract

It is still a puzzling question which gender inequalities in the labour market are perceived as fair and which are not - in the eye of the beholder. This study focuses on gender differences in the perceptions of the fairness of one’s own wage and the role of the occupational context individuals are embedded in. Based on data collected from 27 European countries as part of the 2018 European Social Survey (Round 9), our study contributes to the growing field of wage fairness perceptions by analysing the role of the occupational context (measured as the share of women and the gender pay gap in the respondent’s occupation), and how it moderates gender differences in fairness perceptions. Results indicate that – overall – female workers across Europe perceive their wages more often as unfairly “too low” than their male counterparts within the same country context and occupation, and that this gender gap is more pronounced in occupations with a high proportion of women and higher levels of gender inequality. We interpret these results as an indicator of growing awareness among women regarding the persisting "unfair" gendered wage distributions.