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A major increase in both women’s and men’s employment rates is needed if the EU is to achieve the 75% employment rate target set out in the Europe 2020 strategy. The closing of gender gaps in labour market variables, such as employment and unemployment rates and pay levels, has been one of the main objectives of EU policy. However, discrimination by gender is still evident in the differences in access to the labour market and varied employment patterns and associated working conditions, reflective of persistent gender segregation. In relation to the current crisis, it is clear that pressures on jobs and pay are very much concentrated on the public sector, where many women are employed.
This study is based on findings from the fifth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), conducted in 2010. Its rich set of data – encompassing some 44,000 work- ers across 34 European countries – was used to explore gender differences across several dimensions of working conditions, and to look at relevant country differences.
Just five of the 20 occupational groups employing the highest number of workers can be considered to have a balanced gender mix: food, wood and garment workers; numerical clerks; legal, social and cultural professionals; business professionals; and personal service workers (groups based on the International Standard Classifica- tion of Occupations).
The public sector is important for female-dominated occu- pations – within male-dominated occupations, female employees are more likely to work in the public sector than their male counterparts. Workplaces provide another layer of segregation, with employees often working in same-sex environments, particularly women. Even when women and men are employed in mixed occupations, they are often working in same-sex workplaces.
Gender differences in time spent in paid and unpaid work are important in shaping working conditions for women and men. When paid working hours, hours spent in commuting to and from work and unpaid work time are all combined, the EWCS data found that women work, on average, 64 hours a week compared to the 53 hours worked by men. This can be explained by the fact that women spend 26 hours, on average, on caring activities, compared with the 9 hours spent by men, even though men devote more time to paid work (41 hours, compared with 34 hours spent by women).
One of the main issues related to gender and paid work involves the prevalence of part-time work, which can be viewed both positively and negatively. Certain female- dominated occupations like personal care, cleaning and personal services have particularly high shares of
part-time work. However, part-time work is often found at the lower end of the occupational distribution, with employees often excluded from benefits and disadvan- taged in terms of access to promotion.
Men are much more likely than women to work longer than the 48 hours set out by the EU Working Time Direc- tive, with the exception of those in teaching and clerical jobs. However, there are also many women who work long hours – for example, in sales, hospitality management, agriculture and the service industry. Men in the public sector are around half as likely to work long hours as their counterparts in the private sector and for women the effect is even stronger. Most people in full-time work would like to work less, with men declaring a preference for a 38-hour week, and women a 33-hour week.
Men’s monthly earnings are higher in every occupation but gaps are wider in white-collar male-dominated occupa- tions. In contrast, gender differences in intrinsic job quality across occupations are relatively small when compared to other job quality dimensions. Women tend to report higher satisfaction in terms of job quality than men. Interestingly, working time quality for men is particularly poor for those who have a male boss, while for women it remains almost exactly the same regardless of the sex of their boss. In some countries, women’s working time quality improves when they have children but this is at the cost of a lifelong penalty in monthly earnings.
Well-being is, on average, significantly higher for men than for women. This gender gap exists across sectors and in the majority of occupational groups. Only in the service sector and shop and sales work is the well-being of women at a similar level to that of men. However, both women and men in mixed workplaces report higher well- being, with both men and women reporting this when they work for a boss of the opposite sex. The study also provides clear evidence that the well-being of women who have exited the labour market is lower than that of those remaining in employment.