The Gender Pay Gap among Higher Education Graduates in the Czech Republic

The gender pay gap (GPG) in the Czech Republic is relatively high in an international context. This paper focuses on analysing the GPG among higher education graduates using extensive datasets from a large-scale graduate survey conducted in the Czech Republic in 2018. Since the dataset includes information about the jobs graduates are in one year after graduation and several years later, we are able to observe changes in the level and structure of the GPG during the early career phase. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, we found that the GPG is 22% for a set of variables related to employment one year after graduation and 28% for the set of variables related to employment several years after graduation. Meanwhile, the explained portion of the gap accounted for slightly less than 50% in both cases. The key factors driving the GPG and its evolution over time are horizontal and vertical segregation, particularly the segregation of men and women across different industries and sectors of the economy. In general, career progression does not lead to an increase in the GPG. However, we can observe gender-specific patterns in career progression: while men are more likely to be promoted to leadership positions, women are more likely to transition from initially precarious employment to permanent contracts.