Les inégalités salariales de genre : expliquer l'injustifiable ou justifier l'inexplicable

In 2001 the gender wage gap in the European union was lying between 6 % and 21 % (ECHP, full-timers). Gender wage gap clearly appears as the core of the inequalities between men and women on the labor market. Using recent results from a research program on the gender wage gap, we show that the large impact of the sectoral and occupational factors in explaining the gender wage gap are not mainly due to differences in characteristics of men and women in employment. We also show that testing the job sharing theory is giving different results for men and women and that the particularities of the industrial relations system largely contribute to explain the size and the national differences in the gender wage gap. The article also stresses the fact that mainstream economic theory remains unable to explain what is usually called the explained part of the gender wage gap as well as the unexplained part.