Is There A Glass Ceiling in Morocco? Evidence from Matched Worker-Firm Data

Abstract

According to the glass ceiling hypothesis evidenced in developed countries, there exist larger gender pay gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. In this paper, we investigate the relevance of a glass ceiling effect in Morocco using a matched worker-firm data set of more than 8000 employees and 850 employers. We estimate linear and quantile earnings regressions which account for firm heterogeneity and perform a quantile decomposition. We also focus on the within-firm gender earnings gap using information on the firms’ characteristics. Our results show that the gender earnings gap is higher at the top of the distribution than at the bottom in Morocco. The gender gap widens in the upper tail of the earnings distribution when controlling for firm specific components. The glass ceiling effect is also reinforced over time in Morocco as high wage male workers benefit from higher earnings growth than women.