A note on the gender wage gap among managerial positions using a counterfactual decomposition approach: sticky floor or glass ceiling?

Abstract

In this article, we apply a counterfactual decomposition approach using Quantile Regression (QR) to the wage distribution of managerial workforce in Italy. We find evidence of both significant sticky floor and glass ceiling effects for the Gender Wage Gap (GWG). Furthermore, the U-shaped figure of the pay gap is mostly due to the difference in rewards that the two genders receive for their characteristics, whose relative incidence is also continuously increasing as we move to upper quantiles.