OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION AND ITS IMPACT ON GENDER WAGE DISCRIMINATIONIN CHINA RURAL INDUSTRIAL SECTOR

This paper examines gender wage discrimination in China's newly develo ped rural industrial sector. The different occupational distributions of men and women are shown to be partly due to discrimination in occup ational assignment by the community authorities, but the impact on the gender wage differential of this form of discrimination is not as imp ortant as wage discrimination within each occupation. Moreover, it is found that relative to intra-occupational discrimination, inter-occupa tional wage discrimination is more important than in the UK, Canada, a nd Australia. Possible explanations for these phenomena are provided.