Thursday, 17 March 2011: 17:00
The article investigates the existence of wage discrimination for gender in the Brazilian labor market. The introduction of compulsory open exams in Brazil to public service job candidates should have been a way to prevent clientelism and nepotism. Our hypothesis is that if there was discrimination, so we should observe gender wage gap reduction after the introduction of the open exams. I found evidence in favor of this hypothesis, thus suggesting that there is discrimination against women, even if we assume that male and female employees have the same human capital characteristics within public sector.
Keywords: wage gap; gender discrimination; public policy.
JEL: J16; J31; J45