The Gender Wage Gap in Early Modern Toledo, 1550–1650
利用托莱多一家医院的记录，研究近代早期卡斯蒂利亚护理行业中男女同工不同酬的现象，发现女性工资为男性的70%到100%，差距与劳动力稀缺性相关，市场在决定女性报酬中起重要作用。
We exploit the records of a large Toledan hospital to study the compensation of female labor and the gender wage gap in early modern Castile in the context of nursing—a non-gendered, low-skill occupation in which men and women performed the same clearly defined tasks. We employ a robust methodology to estimate the value of in-kind compensation, and show it to constitute a central part of the labor contract, far exceeding subsistence requirements. Patient admissions records are used to measure nurse productivity, which did not differ across genders. Female compensation varied between 70 percent and 100 percent of male levels, with fluctuations clearly linked to relative labor scarcity. Contrary to common assumptions in the literature, we show that markets played an important role in setting female compensation in early modern Castile. The sources of the gender disparity are, therefore, likely to be found in the broader social and cultural context.