The Gendered Nature of Pattern Bargaining

This article starts from the premise that the way the gender pay-gap is problematized plays an important role in how policy is subsequently implemented or challenged. This article looks at Norway and asks: how does a Nordic country famous for gender equality advances deal with a possible friction between its collective bargaining model and the gender pay gap based on the gendered labor market? We illuminate our insights with a document analysis of two Norwegian Official Commissions, crucial in the formulation of Norwegian gender equality policy, as well as of the annually published documents by LO, which detail the wage settlements between LO and the employers association NHO. The focus on the relationship between the pattern bargaining model and the gender pay gap is meaningful in two respects. First, it contributes to research on pattern bargaining and the gendered nature of institutions in industrial relations. While much of the literature on pattern bargaining studies varieties in power relationships between government, employers and trade unions, we study the relationship of this wage formation norm with the gendered labor market and the resulting gender pay gap. This is important because the pattern bargaining system plays a main role in wage growth for the male dominated export industry as well as the female dominated public sector especially – one important example of where we see a persistent gender pay gap between sectors. Second, it contributes to an emergent field of studies on gender equality policy under conditions of corporatism. We contribute to this field by interrogating a particular part of the corporatist regime, namely the pattern bargaining model, and how an institution that evolved around the notion of the male-breadwinner model is understood in the context of todays gendered labour market with a persistent sectoral gender pay gap.