Abstract
This paper explores gender wage gap trends by assessing the role of changing wage returns to occupational skills, brains—cognitive and interpersonal skills, and brawn—motor-skills and physical strength. Using harmonised data for six European countries and comparable data for the US, this paper finds substantial variation in the impact of occupational skill prices across countries. However, in all countries, a considerable portion of the change in the gender wage gap cannot be explained by changes in occupational skill prices.