In Jordan, for instance, the share of women dropping out of the labour force after 30 increases by 29 percentage points for those with a university education, while that of women with lower levels of education increases by no more than 7 percentage points (Sayre and Hendy, 2013). Public sector salaries are regulated in terms of grades, seniority, etc., In 2007, the average pay gap in Egypt was estimated to be 25%, with particularly high disparities in the sectors of mining (72%), manufacturing (35%) and health and social work (25%) (Tijdens and Klaveren, 2012). The difference is significantly higher in the formal private sector (35-40%) than in the public sector (2%), which would further reinforce women’s preference for the public sector (World Bank, 2014). Some studies argue that the Egyptian pay gap can be attributed mainly to “discrimination against women” and not to differences in human capital characteristics (Biltagy, 2014).