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While population ageing increases the demand for care work, new automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), reinforce the importance of human interaction, with recent research documenting significant wage premiums for social skills. Against this background, we investigate two factors behind the gender wage gap: occupational gender segregation and lower pay in female-dominated occupations, especially care work, where social skills are central.
This working paper updates IWPR’s 2010 research briefing paper “Separate but not Equal: Gender Segregation in the Labor Market and the Gender Wage Gap.”