Paper presented at the Conference “New economic concepts in the current European crises“.

Abstract: Using the Labour Force Survey data in the period 2008-2011 and the Blinder-Oaxaca wage decomposition, this paper examines the scope and the characteristics of wage disparities between women and men in Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Estimation results show that in Serbia and Macedonia employed women have better labour market characteristics than employed men and, once this is taken into account, the wage gap increases in comparison to the simple difference in wages between an average working woman and an average working man. On the other hand, in Montenegro better female characteristics in terms of education are cancelled out by the fact that women work in the less paid sectors and occupations. Therefore, when adjusted for all labour market characteristics, the wage gap in Montenegro remains the same as the average gender difference in wages. The adjusted wage gap, usually ascribed to the effect of labour market discrimination, is the largest in Macedonia (17.9 percent), closely followed by Montenegro (16.1 percent), while the gap in Serbia is substantially lower (11 percent). Furthermore, striking differences in wage gap patterns between the private and the public sector are observed in all three countries, confirming the pronounced duality of labour markets in the Western Balkans.