These patterns hold especially true in the context of Central Asia, the setting of the experimental study described in the sections that follow. If women were to participate in equal measure to men, national income would be 27 percent higher in Kazakhstan, 29 percent higher in Uzbekistan, and 39 percent higher in the Kyrgyz Republic. In Uzbekistan, World Bank estimates suggest that equalizing the average wage among women and men who are already working would alone pull more than 700,000 people out of poverty (World Bank, 2023).

But although measuring the presence of gender differences in wage rates (and incomes) is routine, clearly identifying systematic bias and discrimination against women in wage setting is more challenging. A common approach to investigating differences in wages and the potential for discrimination is a method introduced by Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973), which measures wage differences between groups using a decomposition technique. The approach identifies the proportion of the wage differential between groups that can be attributed to differences in the levels of characteristics between them (for instance, differing levels of education or experience). Then, assuming identical characteristics in the two groups, the remaining inequality can be attributed to differential effects of the characteristics (such as discrimination) as well as any unobserved factors. Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebmer (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of 1,535 such estimates and found that although the gender wage gap has been steadily declining for decades—from around 65 in the 1960s to around 20 in recent years—improvements are almost entirely attributable to better labor market endowments of women (such as better education, training, and work attachment). At the same time, the unexplained component of the wage gap—where potential discrimination resides—has not systematically declined since the 1960s. Penner et. al. (2022) showed that although worker characteristics and selection effects play an important role in the pay gap, data that identify women and men who do the same work for the same employer often reveal significant within-job pay differences in the 11 countries they study.

There is also strong indirect evidence that the gender wage gap is due to views and attitudes rather than ability. Maloney (2022) shows that misogyny, as proxied by derogatory internet search terms, is an economically meaningful and statistically significant predictor of the wage gap at the local level. Such drivers are often referred to as taste-based discrimination, as opposed to motivations based on differential outcomes such as average group productivity levels, which are often referred to as forms of statistical discrimination (Bertrand and Duflo, 2017). Taken collectively, these and similar studies suggest that discrimination against women remains a consequential factor in wage differences around the world.

One commonly cited factor potentially driving lower pay for women than men is often referred to as the “paradox of the contented female worker.” It is supposed that an apparent tendency for women more often to report satisfaction with their work compared to men in the same occupations (and at times the same employer) could contribute to persistent gender pay differences. But as Adriaans and Targa (2023) show, in many countries, overall satisfaction with work does not always translate to satisfaction with compensation. Women are in fact more likely than men to be dissatisfied with their own level of compensation in 15 of the 28 countries studied by the authors. Thus, potential satisfaction differentials appear context specific and are unlikely to explain systematically lower pay for women at the global level.

These concerns are especially relevant in the Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Kazakhstan—where gender inequality in labor market outcomes poses significant challenges. According to government statistics, on average, pay among working women is about 39 percent less than men's pay in Uzbekistan, 25 percent less in the Kyrgyz Republic, and 22 percent less in Kazakhstan, higher 3