The underuse of women’ skills at work.

Abstract

Context: At work, men and women do not do the same, nor do they use the same skills equally. This fact is no longer related to less training and partially explains the wage gap. Thus, the hypothesis that, at work, women underuse their skills more than men is plausible. Objective: To check whether, at work, women underuse their cognitive skills more than men. Method: Spanish data from the Adult Skill Survey (n=6055), a survey promoted by the OECD within the PIAAC, is used to contrast if there are differences (α=0.05) between men and women in how they use four cognitive skills (reading, writing, numeracy skills and ICT) between what is done outside and inside work. If differences are found, a logit model is adjusted to assess the causes of these differences. Results and conclusions: Women use more their writing and numerical skills outside work than at work compared to men. Writing underuse is explained by personal and job circumstances. For numerical skills, being a woman has a specific weight as an explanatory variable. Mathematics is a competence sought and remunerated by the market and for which the educational differential persists.