Discrimination on the labor market towards immigrant women : Is there a different gender wage gap amongst immigrant women compared to natives?

Sammanfattning: The gender inequality in the labor market has long been a discussed and studied topic, and today it is acknowledged that women are discriminated against and face disadvantages in earnings compared to men. This study aims to further investigate if immigrant women face additional earnings differentials due to their ethnicity, more specifically in the Norwegian labor market. By using census data on incomes from a 2019 wave in Norway, this dissertation runs two separate regressions including variables based on diverse socio-demographic characteristics to estimate the regression. Results show that there are evident differences in wages for being a woman and being an immigrant, as the first regression gives statistically significant evidence of negative correlations between logarithmic income and the variables gender and immigrational status. In order to answer the research question an interaction variable is added. The interaction variable, female'immigr, gives statistically significant results in the second regression. The positive estimate of the interaction variable between being a female and being an immigrant implies that immigrant women actually have a smaller disadvantage than native women regarding the gender wage gap of wage earnings. This estimate proves the opposite of our hypothesis and previous research. Furthermore, male immigrants tend to show a greater wage disadvantage than immigrant women. When separating the regression by gender and adding new variables, the outcome implies that men’s wages are more positively affected by being married compared to women. Women on the other hand are more positively affected by educational level. However, women face a larger disadvantage if also being immigrants when moving up the educational ladder, while men practically keep a constant correlation regardless of educational level. The findings from this dissertation moreover provides support for the notion of discrimination on wages as an important factor behind gender differentials in the Norwegian labor market.