Estimating the Gender Pay Gap in the Managerial and non Managerial Italian Labor Market

In this article we apply a two stage approach in order to investigate the existence of a stronger gender discrimination when the job position is higher, splitting the Italian labor market into managers and non managers. Once the threefold selection biases for the two genders are accounted for through a multinomial logit model, amongst non managers both the wage gap and the discriminatory component rise, while amongst managers those two components decrease considerably and become not significant. The stronger negative process of selection amongst Italian female managers can thus lead to regard that segment of the labor market as unfair. To fight this bias policies aimed at reconciling family and work and at curbing stereotypes are recommended