Language and (the estimates of) the gender wage gap

•We link gender intensity of a language and the estimates of gender wage gap (GWG).•If language spoken has gender identification GWG is higher.•The effect is large: 6 pp with an average gender wage gap of app. 20%.•The results are robust to measures of language gender intensity.

In this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country. We find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of GWG. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks.