Ethnic differences in women's employment: the changing role of qualifications

We pool eight spring QLFS quarters for 1992–5 and 2000–3 to examine female employment changes by ethnic group. We find that employment has significantly increased for all women except Black Caribbean/Other women. We show that qualifications have played an increasingly important role and there has been further polarization between the employment of women with a degree compared to those without. This is especially large for Pakistani/Bangladeshi women. Our decomposition analysis shows that decomposing White/Non-White mean employment differences demonstrates an increase in the unexplained discriminatory component for most ethnic groups. Hence differences in White and Non-White characteristics explain less of the 2000–3 employment differential than in 1993–5. Furthermore, significant unexplained ethnic penalties of up to 60% still exist for South Asian women.