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What Causes the Gender Pay Gap? KIA CH E NG B OON /G LOW I MAG ES THREE RESEARCHERS RECENTLY analyzed occu- pational data from 20 countries to compare the salaries of women and men. They found that in countries where occupations are naturally segregated by gender, women���s salaries are nearly���but not quite���equal to men���s salaries. Girts Racko, assistant professor at Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, completed the study with Robert Blackburn, a sociology professor at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and Jennifer Jarman, a sociology professor at Lakehead University in Canada. Their results show that Slovenia, No. 1 on the list, is the only country in the study where women earned slightly more than men, on average. In Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, and Hungary, women���s and men���s salaries were almost equal. Japan, where women face the greatest pay inequality, came in last. The U.S. ranked sixth; the U.K., 13th. The more men there are working in an occupation, the greater the pay gap becomes, says Racko. ���For instance, Girts Racko within nursing, men disproportionately ���ll senior positions,��� he says. ���But the fewer male nurses there are, the more the senior positions must be ���lled by women.��� This research also contradicts a popularly held belief that women make less because they���re working in occupations dominated by women. ���It is a mistake to regard segregation as a measure or even an indicator of gender inequality disadvantaging women,��� says Blackburn in an article on the University of Cambridge���s Web site. In fact, he expresses surprise that more people aren���t aware that ���women���s occupations are healthier, permit greater access to higher status networks, and involve working with better-educated people than men���s occupations.��� However, he adds that ���the existence of segregation creates the opportunity for gender inequality across occupations and restricts occupational choice for both women and men.��� For each country included in the study, the researchers used statistics that indicated the number of women and men in each occupation and the gap in pay between them. ���The Dimensions of Occupational Gender Segregation in Industrial Countries��� was published in the December 2012 issue of Sociology. linguistic complexity of each transcript based on the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables in the words used. The researchers found that ���rms in countries where the native language was the most ���linguistically distant��� from English���those in China, for example���used the most complex language during their conference calls. The researchers also found that the greater the linguistic complexity of the call, the less the market reacted to the ���rm���s announcements. That is, complex language led to lighter trading volumes and less price movement in the days following the release of information. ���More complex language decreases the precision of the signal associated with a given piece of information, such as an earnings surprise,��� the authors write. ���Causes and Consequence of Linguistic Complexity in Non-U.S. Firm Conference Calls��� is available at www.hbs.edu/faculty/ product/43264. BizEd March/April 2013 57