Unequal Pay at Every Level: Educational Disparities in the Gender Wage Gap Across the Wage Distribution in Türkiye

Abstract

This study examines the gender wage gap at different points of the wage distribution in Türkiye, highlighting how its patterns differ across education groups. Using unconditional quantile decomposition on nationally representative labor force microdata, the analysis presents that while the overall gender wage gap appears moderate, it conceals substantial disparities among workers with different education levels. Among those with at most a high school education, women earn 20 to 25 percent less than comparable men across the distribution, whereas among university graduates, the gap narrows in the middle but widens again in the upper quantiles. Observable characteristics explain only a small share of these differences, while the remaining unexplained portion may reflect a range of factors, including unobserved productivity-related characteristics or differential returns to similar characteristics across genders, particularly at the lower and upper ends of the wage distribution.