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(table 9.3, first column, fourth panel). Sectoral disaggregation indicates that there is no significant wage gap in the public sector, and that the private sector unadjusted wage gap (of about 17 percent) is completely explained. Controlling for occupation reduces the size of the overall wage gap to 9 percent, and yields a small unexplained gap of 4–5 percent, indicating that Sinhala women in the private sector are in higherpaying jobs relative to Tamil women and that part of this tracking of Tamil women into lower-paying occupations is explained by lower productive characteristics, while part is not. Wage gaps between Sinhala and Tamil women in the agriculture sector favor Tamil women and are unexplained by their productive characteristics. The gap occurs most likely because Tamil women with identical characteristics to their Sinhalese counterparts benefit from being in the unionized, regulated plantation agriculture sector. Aggregate and public sector wage gaps between Sinhalese and Moor women favor Moors. Aggregate wage gaps appear to be unexplained, but disaggregation reveals that public sector wage gaps are either insignificant or completely explained by the higher productive characteristics of Moor women. There is some indication that Moor women are in higher-paying occupations within the public sector—controlling for between-occupation inequality turns the Moor-favoring unconditional wage gap into an insignificant unconditional wage gap. Tamil-Moor unconditional wage gaps also favor Moors and are quite considerable at the aggregate level (46 percent). But the gaps are insignificant in the public sector and about half the aggregate magnitude in the private sector. Aggregate wage gaps are largely explained, and public sector wage gaps entirely explained, by the better productive characteristics of Moor women. The reversal in sign of the occupation-adjusted aggregate Tamil-Moor wage gap indicates that Moor women are in higher-paying occupations relative to Tamil women.
Conclusions and Policy Implications Conclusions and policy implications apply to the sample used in this study. Gender wage gap decompositions indicate that in all sectors and for all ethnic groups, women are underpaid, even when unconditional wage gaps favor women. Conditional (unexplained) gender wage gaps are larger than unconditional wage gaps (except among Tamils in the private and agriculture sectors), indicating that in the absence of discrimination, all female employees (with the exceptions mentioned