The wage reality of women in the Spanish labour market: gaps, discrimination and divergent effects from the gender perspective.

Abstract

The present work analyses the maintenance and magnitude that the gender wage gaps in the Spanish labour market reach, still today, in the 21st century, distinguishing between the distances that correspond to direct discriminatory practices on the part of the contracting entities from those others that are related to the unequal impact of the advance of precariousness on men and women. For this, a descriptive approach to the phenomenon and a separate analysis of both types of explanatory factors have been used in a sufficient period (2000-2021), in which expansive and recessive periods are contrasted, which allows us to demonstrate the structural nature of the phenomenon. of this problem in Spain, but also in the reference economies that make up the European Union. However, a deep understanding of wage inequality forces us to go beyond the sphere of the world of work and reflect on a broader scope, in which all the jobs that support economic activity and the living conditions of the population are considered. population, as well as the unequal participation and recognition that, from the gender perspective, determine the positional sense of women as workers, both inside and outside the labour market. A treatment in these terms makes it possible to have an accurate diagnosis of the problem to propose possible lines of action aimed at reducing and resolving the inherited economic inequalities that are still active.