Abstract
Context: At work, men and women do not do the same, nor do they use the same skills equally. Thisfact is no longer related to less training and partially explains the wage gap. Thus, the hypothesis that,at work, women underuse their skills more than men is plausible.Objective: To check whether, at work,women underuse their cognitive skills more than men.Method: Spanish data from theAdult Skill Survey(n=6055), a survey promoted by the OECD within the PIAAC, is used to contrast if there are differences(α=0.05) between men and women in how they use four cognitive skills (reading, writing, numeracyskills and ICT) between what is done outside and inside work. If differences are found, a logit modelis adjusted to assess the causes of these differences.Results and conclusions: Women use more theirwriting and numerical skills outside work than at work compared to men. Writing underuse is explainedby personal and job circumstances. For numerical skills, being a woman has a specific weight as anexplanatory variable. Mathematics is a competence sought and remunerated by the market and for whichthe educational differential persists.