Gender Wage Discrimination across Social and Religious Groups in India

This paper focuses on gender wage discrimination across different social and religious groups by addressing the fact that the observed productivity differences between women and men are not only responsible for the huge gender wage gap in India, but for the same levels of productivity, women have been paid lower wages than men. Gender discrimination, superimposed on caste and religious discrimination, accentuates the social exclusion of women belonging to certain castes and religions. We try to reveal how the incidence of the gender pay gap among different religious and social groups changed during the first decade of economic reforms. The presence of substantial wage differentials between men and women workers in the Indian labour market cannot be explained simply by the gender gap of human capital. Discrimination was more severe for women workers in the backward ethnic groups as compared to other women workers.