Austerity measures exacerbate labour market gender inequality in Serbia

To address Serbia’s fiscal deficit in 2014, the government introduced austerity measures, including public sector wage cuts. A team of local PEP researchers set out to analyze how the wage cut would affect men and women differently. Despite the government expecting the wage cut to reduce the public sector gender pay gap, the team’s findings indicate that the wage gap increased slightly due to lower levels of compliance in sub-sectors dominated by men. The cut pushed younger women and women close to retirement into unemployment or inactivity whereas women with children were likely to accept lower wages.
Find out more about the research methods, findings and policy recommendations in the following PEP publications: