for instance male wages may contribute to growing overall inequality because they become more dispersed while the composition effect eg increased participation in parttimepartyear jobs may be the main channel through which women affect overall inequality to test this hypothesis this section applies an analysis that decomposes earnings inequality measured by the theil coefficient by subgroup between men and women from four different employment groups ie fulltime full year fulltime partyear parttime full year and parttime part year in australia canada and the united states the increase in wage dispersion within the groups was even large enough to outweigh a significant negative ie equalising effect of the betweengroup component in most countries increases were primarily driven by growing wage dispersion among fulltime fullyear ftfy workers both male and female except in the netherlands where this concerned only men