Can a minimum wage increase narrow the gender wage gap?

The gender wage gap is still a very relevant issue in our society, and only in the last ten years we have seen marginal improvements being achieved regarding narrowing down this gap. This dissertation aims to analyse the impact of a minimum wage increase on the gender wage gap and if this could be a viable tool to narrow this gap. An extensive and critical analysis of the papers and studies that covered this subject revealed that an increase in the minimum wage lowers the wage differences between men and women for both developed and developing economies. This effect is most significant in economies where the share of women among low paid and low skilled workers is higher, and where there is a bigger difference between the minimum wage and the average wage. The papers analyzed on this thesis suggest that the increase in the minimum wage can also have a negative effect on employment in developed economies, contrarily on what was observed in developing or transition economies, where there was no evidence of an increase in the unemployment rate after the change in the minimum wage.