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Women's Employment in Europe Trends and Prospects - (PG 36 - 80)

The document discusses the political and economic changes in Europe from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, highlighting the initial optimism for job creation and competitiveness that was ultimately undermined by recession and high unemployment. It examines the impact of these changes on women's employment, noting that while women have faced higher unemployment rates, they have also benefited from shifts towards service sector jobs. The text emphasizes the challenges of achieving gender equality in a context of economic restructuring and the decentralization of pay determination, which has negatively affected women's earnings and job security.

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27 views45 pages

Women's Employment in Europe Trends and Prospects - (PG 36 - 80)

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charney2009

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1 Political and economic

change

At the end of the 1980s Europe was preparing for 1992 and the creation of
the single European market; the forecasts were upbeat (Cecchini 1988) with
predictions of large-scale job creation, enhanced international competitiveness
and a smooth development towards monetary union based upon the European
Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The changes in regimes in Eastern Europe
and the former USSR were already underway but the impact on the world
economy and on specific countries and regions of the EU was not yet apparent.
The Community seemed poised on the brink of a major push to extend the
benefits of the market to European citizens through the implementation of
the European charter of fundamental social rights. With the commitment to
equal treatment firmly established in the 1959 Treaty of Rome and reaffirmed
in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the prospects for equality appeared propitious.
However, the 1990s did not live up to their anticipated promise. At the
beginning of the decade the European Union experienced one of its worst
recessionary periods, and faced crisis within the ERM. The record
unemployment levels led to a change in priority, in principle towards more
employment-intensive growth, but this objective was adopted against a
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

prospect of yet higher unemployment as the economies struggled to meet the

conditions for the next stage of European integration. The Union expanded
to absorb three new member states, two of them—Finland and Sweden—
having faced major problems of restructuring to meet changing internal and
external conditions from the start of the decade. Further expansion plans,
this time towards Eastern European countries, provided a backcloth to debates
on prospects for political, monetary and economic integration. By the late
1990s, the turbulence in the exchange rates had settled down and most
countries had been deemed to have met the Maastricht conditions for
European monetary union, perhaps in some cases revealing the greater
importance of political will and political agendas over bureaucratic rules in
determining the development of Europe. However, the problems of
unemployment appeared to be even more intractable as the two economies
that are perhaps most central to the European project, France and Germany,

Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.
18 Women’s employment in a changing Europe

have continued to face record levels of unemployment. These problems led

to the agreement in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty to establish employment as
an area of common concern, for member states to develop employment action
plans according to an agreed set of guidelines, and for the action plans to be
monitored and evaluated at a European Union level.
While the macroeconomic and political conditions for progress towards
equality have deteriorated, the equality agenda has apparently moved more
to centre stage within the Community, accorded equal priority with
employment, and bolstered by the adoption, following on from the 1995
Beijing UN World Conference on Women, of a Communication on
mainstreaming. Yet while there is a greater public recognition of the need for
equality policy, at least at European level, the early 1990s perhaps saw the
reemergence of a view that equality had perhaps been taken not only far
enough, but even perhaps too far (National reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa
1996), such that it was now men who faced the most severe problems of
coming to terms with their changing economic and social roles. This potential
backlash against equality has coincided with a general disenchantment with
social legislation. There thus now seems little prospect that the implementation
of the European charter of fundamental social rights through the social chapter
to the Maastricht Treaty will lead to a major expansion of new social
legislation. While in the 1970s and 1980s the Commission played a leading
role in initiating and developing major areas of social legislation, such as the
equality directives, the 1990s saw a shift in practice, supported by the member
states and the social protocol of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, towards an
increased role for the social partners in negotiating social policy through
framework agreements (see Box 1.1 for a summary of the main measures
taken by the European Union in the area of social policy directly or indirectly
relevant to gender equality). That procedure necessarily limits the likely
development of social legislation to that felt appropriate by European
employers and clearly places a limit on the extent to which the social chapter
could be used to develop a new platform of rights for citizens of Europe.
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

How have these changing economic and political conditions impacted on

the development of women’s position in the labour market in Europe and in
the individual member states? To consider these issues further we look first in
more detail at the changing world and European economic conditions,
followed by an analysis of recent trends in growth, productivity, employment
and unemployment. This provides the background for an assessment, from a
gender perspective, of the current policy agendas within the EU at European
and national level, towards the macroeconomy, the labour market and the
welfare state.

Box 1.1 EC directives, memoranda, recommendations, resolutions

and programmes to promote equality of opportunity

Council Directives
Directive 75/117/EEC. Equal pay for men and women for the same work
or for work of equal value.
Directive 76/207/EEC. Equal treatment for men and women in relation to
access to employment, vocational training, promotion, and working
conditions.
Directive 79/7/EEC. Equal treatment for men and women in matters of
statutory social security.
Directive 86/378/EEC. Equal treatment for men and women in occupational
social security schemes.
Directive 86/613/EEC. Equal treatment between men and women engaged
in a self-employed capacity, including agriculture, and on the
protection of self-employed women during pregnancy and
motherhood.
Directive 92/85/EEC. The protection of pregnant workers and workers
who have recently given birth or are breastfeeding.
Directive 93/104/EC. The Working Time Directive establishes limits to
weekly hours, night work and provides basic entitlements to rest
periods and annual leave.
Directive 96/34/EC. Grants male and female workers the right to unpaid
parental leave of at least three months.
Directive 96/97/EC. Amends Directive 86/378/EEC (Post-Barber Directive)
Directive 97/80/EC. Shifts burden of proof in sex discrimination cases
except in social security cases. Plaintiff no longer bears the full burden
of proving her case and a clear definition of indirect discrimination is
also provided.
Directive 97/81/EC. To remove discrimination against part-time workers,
to improve the quality of part-time work, to facilitate part-time work
on a voluntary basis to contribute to flexible working-time
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

arrangements which take into account employer and worker needs.

Memoranda
Memorandum of 23.6.1994 on equal pay for work of equal value COM(94).
Defined the scope and concept of equal pay for work of equal value
and provided guidance on the criteria to be taken into account in job
evaluation and job classification.
Follow-up Code of Practice for use by employers, employees and trade
unions adopted by the Commission on 17.7.1996.

Council recommendations
Recommendation of 13.12.1984 on the promotion of positive action for
women (84/635/EEC).

Recommendations of 27.11.91 on the protection of the dignity of women

and men at work (92/131/EEC). Supported by a Code of Practice on
measures to combat sexual harassment in 1991.
Council recommendation of 31.3.1992 on childcare (92/241/EEC).
Commission recommendation of 27.5.1998 on the ratification of ILO
Convention no. 177 on homework of 20.6.1998.

Council resolutions
Resolution of 12.7.1982 on the promotion of equal opportunities for
women.
Resolution of 7.6.1984 on action to combat unemployment amongst
women.
Resolution of the Council and of the Ministers of Education, meeting
within the Council of 3.6.1985, containing an action programme on
equal opportunities for girls and boys in education.
Second Council resolution of 24.7.1986 on the promotion of equal
opportunities for women.
Resolution of 16.12.1988 on the reintegration and late integration of
women into working life.
Resolution of 22.6.1994 on the promotion of equal opportunities for women
and men through action by the European structural funds.
Resolution of 27.3.1995 on the balanced participation of women and
men in decision making.

The equality action programmes

The First Community Programme on the Promotion of Equal Opportunities
for Women (1982–1985) recognised that while legal measures were
important, there was a need for additional and complementary measures
in the form of ‘positive action’ in various fields.
The Second Medium-Term Community Programme for Women (1986–
1990) continued to develop the implementation of the directives in an
enlarged Community of 12 member states. It widened the scope of equal
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

opportunities to new spheres of positive action in training, in new technology,

in the reconciliation of working and family life and in local development.
The Third Medium-Term Community Action Programme on Equal
Opportunities for Women and Men (1991–1995) proposed a new, more
comprehensive, strategy for action.
The Fourth Medium-Term Community Action Programme on Equal
Opportunities for Women and Men (1996–2000) focuses on the principle
of mainstreaming. It proposes that methods, strategies, models and
studies aimed at integrating the equal opportunities dimension into policies
and activities be developed and promoted in the member states.

The first three programmes were implemented on the initiative of the

Commission via Council resolutions. The fourth programme was proposed
by the Commission to the Council and established by Council decision.

A changing world and a changing European economy:

the implications for women and men in the European
Union

There are two main competing perspectives on the changes in the world
economy in the 1990s. For some it marked a watershed when the impossibility
of regaining full employment or maintaining a strong welfare state within an
integrated and globalised world economy became clear even to the most
interventionist nation states. These beliefs have been bolstered by the collapse
of the Communist bloc which for so long tried, but eventually failed, to buck
the need to succumb to the discipline of the market. For others the increasing
debate over globalisation hides instead a political change, whereby
governments have effectively abdicated their responsibility for policy and for
ameliorating the impact of economic change on citizens. Whatever the relative
merit of the two arguments, the outcome has been a downplaying of the
possibility of using macro policy to influence growth and employment and a
re-emphasis instead on supply-side measures, aimed at increasing
competitiveness of firms and the employability of people.

Changing patterns of international competition and women’s

employment

Changing patterns of international competition and increasing globalisation

have been invoked as the main factors explaining, for example:

• high levels of unemployment;

• the relocation of activities and the restructuring towards services;
• the increasing impact of technological change on employment patterns
and distribution;
• the widening of earnings dispersion;
• the decentralisation of collective bargaining and abandonment of wage
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

indexation;
• the increase in flexible and unsocial hours working;
• the pressure to reduce public expenditure and public sector deficits.

All of these developments have implications for gender equality. The emergence
of high and persistent levels of unemployment has affected both sexes but
overall in Europe women have higher unemployment rates and account for a
disproportionate share of the long-term unemployed. Moreover, progress
towards equality is unlikely to be made rapidly in a period of sluggish
employment growth or decline; desegregation of the labour market is likely
to be much easier to achieve under conditions of expansion and full
employment.
Yet while women face greater risks of unemployment than men they have

also, up to now, tended to benefit from the relocation of manufacturing

activities and the restructuring towards service sector employment, both
because of gender segregation by job task and because the often lower pay
and more flexible contracts found particularly in private services favour
women’s employment. While some women have benefited from restructuring,
others have also faced displacement through the processes of competition,
including the effects of opening up of the Eastern European economies, which
has provided opportunities for displacement to low-cost production areas
within Europe itself. Moreover, the rapid diffusion of new technologies,
exacerbated through globalisation, may further destabilise prospects within
many service and clerical areas, as opportunities increase for new forms of
employment and for relocation of employment through, for example,
teleworking. Thus it is not the case that economic restructuring can be relied
upon to continue to favour the increasing employment of women.
Widening earnings distributions have also been attributed to the impact of
world trade, as those parts of production involving less skilled work lose
comparative advantage relative to production requiring skilled workers (Wood
1994). The reasons for these developments remain subject to controversy, with
many casting doubt on the role of world trade in changing patterns of earnings
(Freeman 1995). Nevertheless, widening income distribution and a declining
value of the minimum wage (OECD 1997a) have clear negative impacts on
those women concentrated at the bottom of the hierarchy. Moreover, wide
earnings differentials are often found to be a more important factor in explaining
differences between countries in gender pay inequality than the relative position
of women within the pay structure (Blau and Kahn 1992).
This move towards greater earnings dispersion can be expected to be at
least in part the outcome of the decentralisation of pay determination (Katz
1993; Traxler 1996). The devolution of pay determination to companies,
and within companies to individual establishments, is often seen as a
requirement of new competitive conditions, where more scope is apparently
needed at the level of the organisation to adapt systems of work organisation
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

and structures of costs to changing demands. Decentralisation of pay

determination has also gone hand in hand with moves away from the
indexation of wages, and a requirement that pay should be linked more closely
to the profitability of the organisation. These developments are, however, as
we document below, likely to have removed more women than men from the
protection of wage regulation and to have allowed wages for the less
advantaged to fall, relative to the average.
The 1990s have renewed interest in the development of flexible employment
forms, seen as offering the advantages of both allowing more competitive
systems of work organisation and being a means of work sharing. Increased
unsocial hours working is often argued to be necessary both to meet changing
consumer demands for services and to allow the development of lean
production systems based on just-in-time systems of production, together
with a more intensive utilisation of capital equipment (Bosch 1995). The

spread of flexible employment contracts and unsocial hours working affects

both men and women, but the form of flexibility tends to be gendered; men
are more frequently involved in annualised hours working or in unsocial
hours or shift working as part of full-time contracts, while women tend to be
concentrated in flexible part-time work (Rubery et al. 1997a, 1998b; Bettio
et al. 1998a). Nevertheless, differences between countries in the extent and
nature of flexible work contracts may call into question the assumption that
these working arrangements are a requirement of modern competitive
conditions.
Even the pressures to reduce public expenditure and public sector deficits
are often attributed to new competitive conditions. These are said to require
first of all exchange rate stability and monetary union, which brings with it
convergence criteria; but this argument is bolstered by a belief that neither
employers nor citizens are able or willing to pay for a large welfare state
without this impacting seriously on the capacity of the economy to create
and maintain employment. Thus pressures to reduce non-wage labour costs,
in the belief that this will promote employment, complement arguments that
the welfare state is no longer sustainable. Women’s interests are at stake in
these developments from a range of perspectives: public sector services are
being cut back, placing more burdens on women’s domestic labour and at
the same time reducing job opportunities in the public sector; cutting non-
wage labour costs, particularly on low-paid jobs, could boost employment of
women, but women will be disadvantaged if the result is an expansion in the
number of jobs outside protection or greater reliance on private welfare
provision (Maier 1995).
Thus, to summarise, many of the changes in the economies of Europe
have been attributed to changing competitive conditions, even though
questions may be raised in many cases regarding the validity of the
argument. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that changes have taken place
within the world economy and domestic economies which have destabilised
relationships and placed in doubt the pattern of future developments. One
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

universal or common feature of the 1990s recession was a loss of consumer

and employee confidence with respect to future income and job prospects,
fuelled by the ever-increasing search for flexibility and by the collapse in
some countries of key markets such as the housing market. The long-term
impact of this increased instability on both the labour market and the
markets for commodities is not yet clear, but it must be recognised that
short-term boosts to the economy will not necessarily be sufficient to rebuild
confidence among labour market participants in the stability and security of
their jobs and careers.
Under these conditions it is arguable that the effectiveness of
macroeconomic policy in providing conditions for stable growth has been
eroded. The destabilisation of the labour market in the 1990s particularly
affected demand for male labour. Yet while the demand for female labour
has remained more robust, closer inspection reveals that this high level of

demand for female labour was at least in part associated with the emphasis
on flexibility and low labour costs, characteristics associated more with female
than male labour. Moreover, even the female labour market is facing
destabilisation in the face of new technologies and the cutbacks to public
expenditure being made again in the name of international competitive
pressures. Where globalisation and international competition are implicated
in changing patterns of production and changing labour market systems,
there is again a clear gender impact; women are the most vulnerable to
pressures towards wider earnings dispersion, more flexible working-time and
decentralisation and fragmentation of forms of labour market regulation and
protection. These issues will be explored in more detail below.

Convergence and divergence within European member

states

While recession has been a feature of all advanced countries during the 1990s,
the intensity of the recession experienced within the European Union compared
to that of Japan and the USA is shown clearly in Figure 1.1. However, it is
primarily on the employment and unemployment indicators that the European
Union performed worse than its competitors. In Japan employment, output
and productivity moved downwards in parallel through the early 1990s, giving
rise to a slight increase in unemployment; the USA moved into steep recession
in 1990, with employment falling faster than output, but after 1992
employment growth resumed, outstripping output growth. In contrast, in
the European Union output growth began to decelerate in 1989 and declined
consistently until reaching a negative figure in 1993, before moving fairly
strongly upwards again into positive growth in 1994. The decline in
employment which followed the output decline with a lag was much steeper
and more prolonged than in the USA. Although employment growth has
been positive since 1995, it has remained at a very low level, insufficient to
make a major impact on unemployment rates. The EU unemployment rate
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

moved steeply upwards in the early 1990s, from a low of 7.6 in 1990 to a
high of 11.1 in 1994, and subsequent declines have still left rates well above
those in the 1980s. The impact of the slow growth of output on employment
was contained during the first part of the 1990s by a relatively slow growth
of productivity, well below the long-term average of 2 per cent per annum,
thereby increasing the employment intensity of growth over this period.
However, indications that this pattern is more cyclical than long term are
found in the rapid increase in productivity in 1994, which modified, at least
in the short term, the impact of output recovery on employment.
The problems that these macroeconomic conditions caused countries in
meeting the Maastricht convergence criteria are indicated in Table 1.1. Despite
the commitment at the end of 1992 to move towards a maximum public
sector debt of 60 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product),

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
Figure 1.1 Annual change in growth, productivity and employment and the unemployment rates in the European Union (E15), USA and
Japan, 1987–1997

Source: CEC (1997a).

Table 1.1 General government deficit and general government gross debt

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Source: CEC (1997a: Tables 76, 78).

Notes
a Net lending as a share of gross domestic product at market prices.

Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
b General government consolidated gross debt as a share of gross domestic product (market prices),
c Figures for 1996 (except Italy, Germany and Finland) and 1997 are estimates.
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Figure 1.2 Convergence criteria for European monetary union and the performance of member states

Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
Source: CEC (1998).

Notes
Data for inflation: January 1998.
Data for government deficit: 1997.
Data for government debt: 1997.
Data for interest rates: January 1998.
28 Women’s employment in a changing Europe

indebtedness continued to rise, from 60 per cent of E15 GDP (including unified
Germany) in 1992 to 73.2 per cent in 1996, with a predicted marginal decline
in 1997. Of the 11 countries joining the EMU in the first wave, 8 had
cumulated government debt to GDP ratios above permitted levels and required
the European Council to abrogate an excessive debt decision to allow them
to proceed (see Figure 1.2). The basis for this decision was that by 1997 most
countries’ cumulated debt was beginning to fall as a percentage of GDP.
European countries were more successful in meeting the target of reducing
current public sector deficits as a share of GDP to 3 per cent. These reached
a high of 6.3 per cent on average in 1993, but fell consistently over subsequent
years, with 13 out of 15 countries estimated to hit the 3 per cent target or
below in 1997 (see Table 1.1 and Figure 1.2), with Italy slightly above and
Greece the major exception with a 4.9 per cent debt ratio. The longer-term
impact of these efforts to meet these criteria on the macroeconomic stability
and employment creating capacity of the European Union have yet to be
assessed.
These economic trends need to be considered in the context of the
prospects for resolving the need both for employment and for sustainable
development. There is little evidence that Europe has moved from
employment creating to employment displacing growth, but the problem
still remains of generating sufficient growth to do more than keep pace with
productivity increases and thereby satisfy the increasing demand for work.
However, if ‘sustainable development’ requires a slower rate of growth than
in the past, then there may be a need to increase the employment intensity
of growth to higher levels than before (CEC 1994). This policy needs to be
squared with the general view that Europe’s comparative advantage in the
world economy lies in the direction of creating high-value-added
production based on skilled labour, a view now incorporated into the
employment guidelines. These apparently conflicting policy objectives
might require both a reconsideration of issues such as work sharing, and a
reconsideration of whether high-skill production systems can be based upon
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

high utilisation of skills and labour, and not on minimum staffing ratios (see
Chapter 8 for further discussion of the need for employment- and skill-
intensive growth).
While there is a high degree of similarity in the experience of EU member
states over this period, significant differences can still be identified with respect
to the level and intensity of the recession, the timing of the recession and
recovery, the change in employment and unemployment levels associated with
the output changes, and the trends in convergence towards the Maastricht
public sector debt and deficit requirements (see Table 1.1). These differences
between member states (see Figure 1.3), as we explore further below, have
provided different contexts for the evolution of women’s employment position
between member states. Two countries stand out as having maintained a
relatively buoyant output growth during this recessionary period, although
their impact on the E15 is limited, as both countries concerned—Ireland and

Luxembourg—are small states. Ireland’s output and productivity growth was

particularly robust, while its employment performance was much more
modest. Luxembourg has fared better in employment terms while productivity
growth has stagnated.
Denmark also differs from the remaining E15 in having a poor output and
employment performance in the late 1980s, such that the experience of the
1990s has been relatively similar to, and in output and productivity terms
even somewhat better than, the late 1980s. In Denmark unemployment rose
steadily since the mid- to late 1980s but stabilised around 1993 and
subsequently started to decline. Four countries—Greece, the UK, Sweden
and Finland—also stand out as having experienced a somewhat earlier move
into recession than that of the EU as a whole, although the reasons for this
and their subsequent experience have all been somewhat diverse. Greece, for
example, experienced negative growth in both output and employment at
the turn of the decade, recovered somewhat between 1991 and 1992, only
for output to slump again between 1992 and 1993 (but with employment
continuing to rise). Growth in both the UK and Sweden decelerated at the
end of the 1980s, only moving into positive growth in the UK between 1992
and 1993 and in Sweden in 1993–1994. Sweden’s employment fell consistently
from 1990 to 1997, except for a slight rise in 1995. The UK also suffered
significant decreases in employment between 1990 and 1993, but employment,
along with output, started to rise from 1994 onwards. Undoubtedly the most
exceptional experience is found in Finland, where output and employment
collapsed at the turn of the 1990s following a period of very rapid growth in
the 1980s, as a consequence of the disintegration of trade with the former
USSR and Eastern Europe and the ending of the domestic credit boom. Output
fell by over 7 per cent between 1990 and 1991 and employment fell by over
12 per cent between 1990 and 1992 and continued to fall until 1994. From
1995 onwards there has been a modest recovery in employment, but by no
means sufficient to compensate for the earlier falls.
Even among those remaining countries which largely followed the cyclical
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

pattern of the E15 level there are considerable differences in the intensity of
the recession. The Netherlands, for example, experienced only a relatively
gentle recession with output and employment stagnating rather than declining
and unemployment hovering around 6 per cent to 7 per cent over the time
period. In contrast, in Spain employment fell every year from 1991 to 1994
and by 4 per cent in 1992–1993, while unemployment rose steadily from
16.2 per cent in 1990 to 24.1 per cent in 1994, before falling slightly up to
1997. This poor employment performance reflects a relatively strong growth
in productivity in Spain over this period. Differences in productivity
performance are associated with differences in the outcome of the recession
on employment and unemployment. Greece’s poor output performance did
not result in even greater employment falls and rises in unemployment only
because of a slow growth of productivity.

Figure 1.3 Annual change in growth, productivity and employment and the
unemployment rate, 1987–1997

Source: CEC (1995b, 1997a).

The changing political and policy context for women’s

employment

Although there are strong similarities in the overall pattern of growth,

employment and unemployment to emerge from this investigation of EU
member states, there is also considerable evidence of diversity in the context
of the development of women’s employment position over the 1990s. When
the factors behind the diversity in main economic indicators are considered,
some quite different structural and political conditions facing member states
are revealed. These range from specific economic conditions, such as
differences in the size and structure of labour supply (see Box 1.2) and
differences in the stage of economic development (see Box 1.3), to more
politically-and policy-related variables, discussed in more detail below.

Impact of political change

One of the major factors differentiating the experience of European member
states during the 1990s has been the impact of the collapse of the former
USSR and the Eastern European trading bloc on the economies of the member
states. Two countries in which these developments have had a dominant impact
on their internal evolution can be singled out, namely Germany and Finland,
with Austria also experiencing a significant but less dramatic restructuring of
its economy as a consequence of the opening of its borders with Eastern
European economies.
For Finland and Germany, the internal transformations associated with
this development are both radical and extensive. It is in fact more by chance

Box 1.2 Population change and migration flows

Four countries stand out as having faced notable changes to their labour
supply conditions due to changes in migration flows.
Germany faced a rising population and labour supply due to
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

immigration from Eastern Europe, and within Germany due to immigration

to the West from East Germany, with flows in the opposite direction
primarily related to West Germans taking up higher level jobs in the East.
Thus within East Germany there was competition with West Germans for
key jobs. Austria also experienced an inflow of migrants with the opening
of its borders to Eastern Europe.
In contrast Ireland experienced a rise in its population and labour
supply due to decreased rates of out-migration and the impact of the
high birth rate of the 1970s and early 1980s. Thus the rising Irish
employment rates were achieved against the background of an increasing
labour supply. Finally, Luxembourg continued to increase its use of foreign
labour during the period, involving both inward migration and the use of
trans-border employment flows.

Box 1.3 Economic development and EU transfers and structural

funds

Divergent experience between member states is in part related to

differences in stage of development and structural adjustment, including
the degree of integration of women into the economy. For example,
countries such as Spain entered the 1990s with a very low level of female
participation, and faced the problems of adjusting to world recession
against a background of a rapidly increasing demand for employment
from its female population.
Some of the small countries of the EU in fact experienced better growth
and employment prospects than their larger and wealthier counterparts
as a result of the flow of funds into the economies through structural
funds and other income transfer policies of the EU. The most important
example of this pattern is Ireland, but Portugal and Greece have also
benefited from these transfers. Irish per capita income has been forecast
to rise from 72 per cent of the European average in 1990 to around 83
per cent in the year 2000, to some extent as the result of these EU transfers
(National reports, Ireland: Barry 1996:3). Much of Ireland’s growth has
been stimulated by a major public investment programme, funded through
EU structural and cohesion funds.

that Germany does not appear as a country with a non-standard pattern of

evolution in output and employment over this time period, rather than evidence
of underlying stability in the system. The former East German GDP fell by
more than a third over two years to a trough in 1991, although much of the
subsequent recovery has been brought about by direct transfers from West to
East and the employment losses have been underestimated because of the
high share of the East German workforce on employment schemes (National
reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:10). The integration of East Germany
into the old Federal Republic of Germany has dominated the development of
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

the whole German economy in the 1990s. In the first instance the unification
resulted in an employment stimulus in the West but the impact of transfer
payments plus the transfer of production to the East has turned a boom into
historically high unemployment rates for the post-war period in both the
East and the West. Men and women in the East have experienced a
fundamental transformation of their economic and social lives, with women
in the East facing particular problems of being expected to adapt to the
participation patterns of their West German counterparts. These changes have
involved not only a cutback in employment opportunities but also changes in
childcare facilities, the growth of part-time employment and a change to
women’s legal rights, for example over abortion. What was perhaps most
significant about the experience of the early 1990s, however, was the resistance
shown by East German women to adjustment to West German norms and

values. Whatever the resistance in terms of attitudes, though, there was still a
real change in economic conditions, with less than a quarter of East Germans
in 1994 (National reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:23) still in the same
job they held at the time of unification. Likewise, the West Germans have
been profoundly affected by the unification process, which has challenged
the survival of many elements of the German economic and welfare model.
Within the former West Germany the impact of unification was found in the
continuing depressed levels of domestic demand, in part the consequence of
the higher tax regime imposed to fund the unification process.
Finland has faced a loss of its main trading relationships, and a loss of its
political position as a neutral state within the Cold War framework. Although
other Nordic countries have faced similar problems to Finland in maintaining
its high employment level and strong welfare state, the actual cause of the
threats to the Finnish model must be regarded as rather different in origin
from, for example, the problems faced by Sweden in the early 1990s, although
Finland also suffered from an overexpanded domestic economy relative to its
international strength.
Destabilisation was not only related to the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In
Italy, political corruption scandals led to the apparent overthrow of the main
parties by new political forces, only for those to be engulfed again in corruption
charges and to be replaced, after a period of government by ‘technical experts’,
by a new left coalition. However, the impact of this period of political upheaval
in Italy was felt in the economic sphere through a variety of effects, most notably
the massive devaluation of the lira, and the deflationary impact of delays to
public tenders and the virtual ending of aid to the south which had been a
vehicle for much of the corruption. These changes had significant effects on
employment patterns in the south, where most unemployed women are located.

Macroeconomic and fiscal policy

Macroeconomic and fiscal policy debates have been dominated by the

agreement to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria. The significance of

Maastricht increased as the date for monetary union approached and as
governments increasingly used the criteria to justify a restrictive economic
policy. Policy in the earlier part of the decade to some extent seemed to have
been conducted relatively independently of convergence criteria, with, for
example, some member states accepting or even encouraging the loosening
of the ERM arrangement. However, while all currencies became in principle
free to float, some economies geared their policies around maintaining a strong
currency: for example, much of France’s unemployment problem has been
attributed to its franc fort policy.
Table 1.1 and Figure 1.2 indicate the tightening policy environment implied
by the criteria; these show that many countries were required to reduce
significantly their public sector deficit as a share of GDP. One of the most

Table 1.2 Annual variation in wages and inflation in the European Union, 1992–1997

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Source: CEC (1997a: Tables 29, 25).

Notes

Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
a Nominal compensation per employee; total economy.
b Price deflator—private consumption.
36 Women’s employment in a changing Europe

significant aspects of the Maastricht convergence criteria was that they

imposed a convergence of financial criteria independently of levels of
development or levels of public sector service. Thus all countries, whether
they have a well-developed or only an embryonic welfare state, have been
under pressure to reduce public sector services and expenditure. While
Maastricht may inhibit the long-term convergence upwards of levels of public
service provision within Europe, those with high levels of service provision
also faced problems in cutting back on these activities to meet the criteria.
For example, in Scandinavia the economy is now based on dualearner families
reliant on public sector services for employment and for facilitating care work,
so that cutbacks to welfare threatened to destabilise the whole Scandinavian
labour market and gender model.
Within this general macroeconomic framework, member states have
changed their welfare state and public sector employment policies (see pp.

Box 1.4 Wage moderation has been achieved by a range of different

policies, with different implications for women

In Greece there was severe pressure applied on real wage levels In order
to maintain competitiveness and meet the Maastricht convergence criteria.
The consumer price index rose from 100 to 217 between 1988 and 1993,
but wage levels only rose to 183. The statutory wage-indexing system
was abolished in 1991. The policy of wage restraint was applied
particularly to the public sector with significant implications for women
(CEC 1996a).
In Italy the long-standing policy of wage indexation was abolished,
leaving those workers outside strongly organised sectors vulnerable to
real wage falls as minimum wage rates could now be adjusted only every
two years through sectoral collective agreements. Wage gaps widened,
including the gender pay gap (National reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa 1996:4).
In France the real value of the minimum wage was maintained (National
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reports, France: Silvera et al. 1996:73), and policies to introduce a lower

minimum wage for young people, in addition to the lower rates already
allowed for young people on training contracts, were successfully resisted.
In Denmark the ending of indexation in the early 1980s led to a
widening of the gender gap between men and women, albeit from a
relatively low level. This widening was the result of two factors; the move
to decentralised bargaining and the policy of wage moderation in the
public sector (National reports, Denmark: Boje 1996:42).
Wage increases in Ireland were regulated in the mid-1990s by a three-
year Programme for Competitiveness and Work, an agreement negotiated
between the social partners and the government (National reports, Ireland:
Barry 1996:5). This agreement set a target increase of 6 per cent over
three years, but with higher increases for low-paid workers, of potential

38–45) and changed their fiscal regimes, often with a view to meeting other
EU objectives such as reducing non-wage costs of employment, as well as to
meet macroeconomic targets.
The macroeconomic and political environment has led to two main policy
directions with respect to wage policy in the 1990s: wage moderation and
decentralisation of pay determination. Both policies may not necessarily be
compatible; while it has been argued that only a high level of centralisation
or alternatively a high level of decentralisation can control wage inflation,
this position is not universally accepted. Examples of countries where wage
moderation policies were enacted through relatively centralised systems of
wage determination include Belgium, Ireland, Finland and Germany, where
wage freezes or wage growth below inflation have been associated with below
average EU inflation rates in the 1990s (see Table 1.2 and Box 1.4). However,
other countries sought to bring about wage moderation by encouraging

benefit for women. However, local productivity increases were allowed

up to 3 per cent, and women are likely to have benefited less than men
from local deals.
In Spain, perhaps the main contribution to reductions in wage costs in
the 1990s came from changes in the structure of costs, rather than from
reform of collective bargaining. The growth of temporary jobs contributed
to control of unit labour costs, although with significant negative effects
on the women and young people trapped in this form of employment
(National reports, Spain: Moltó 1996:13).
In Belgium a wage freeze was imposed in 1995/6 and a new system of
wage indexation was introduced which provided less complete protection
against inflation as it excluded changes in prices of petrol, cigarettes and
alcohol (National reports, Belgium: Meulders and Hecq 1996:3).
Sweden moved to a more decentralised system of wage determination
from its traditional centralised system based on the principle of wage solidarity
and narrow wage dispersion.The result of decentralisation and the movement
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

away from a commitment to narrow wage dispersion was an increase the

gender pay gap (National reports, Sweden: Gonäs and Spånt 1996:16).
In Finland centralised wage determination was maintained, and in
fact used to achieve wage moderation during the recession. There was
an equality supplement negotiated in both 1991 and 1995, but wage
freezes in the public sector offset these benefits for women to some extent
(National reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:29–30).
In the UK the policy of deregulation of wages and decentralisation of
collective bargaining was taken to further extremes, to include not just
the private organised sector but also the low-paid unorganised sectors
and the public sector. The wages councils which set legal minimum wages
in a range of private sector low-paying sectors were abolished in 1993
and in the public sector moves were made to encourage local pay
determination (National reports, UK: Rubery 1996:99–101).

decentralisation—or in the case of Italy by drastically reforming collective

bargaining in order to impose wage freezes and by ending the indexing of
minimum wages in line with inflation. In contrast, France maintained the
real and relative value of the national minimum wage (OECD 1997b:13) at
the same time as encouraging decentralisation of collective bargaining.
While we are not in a position to assess fully the impact of 1990s wage
policies on gender pay differentials, it does appear that different methods of
implementing wage moderation polices are likely to have diverse gender effects.
Thus policies which result in a proportional real reduction in all wages are
less likely to protect women than policies which maintain the real value of
the minimum wage while attempting to moderate collectively negotiated rates.
Thus those countries that attempted to control wages through dismantling
national or industry-level collective bargaining—or in the case of Italy
weakening the capacity of collective bargaining to protect real wages by

Box 1.5. Pension reforms and gender equality

Sweden provides a universal pension to all citizens but it also has a
national supplementary pension based on contributions. The contribution
record for a full pension has been extended from 30 to 40 years, a measure
which will disadvantage more women than men particularly as no credits
are given for home duties in this supplementary pension (National reports,
Sweden: Gonäs and Spånt 1996:9–10).
The process of bringing about pension reform in Italy was long and
contentious. The new system announced in 1995 will probably reduce
gender inequalities but through a process of levelling down rather than
levelling up; men suffer more than women but women do not benefit
directly. Women with short employment histories or in part-time jobs will
find it difficult to meet the requirements for 14–15 years of full-time
equivalent contributions, but not many women are in part-time work in
Italy. On a more positive level, self-employed women will now be
compulsorily insured (National reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa 1996:6).
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Pension coverage was extended in Ireland to the self-employed and

to 30,000 part-timers under a 1991 act. Most of the part-timers covered
were women, but a substantial number (approximately 12,000) still
remained outside the scope of the pension system as they earned below
the earnings threshold of IR£30 per week. About 90,000 atypical workers
were still outside the system, including low-paid self-employed and unpaid
family helpers, many of whom are also female. Those on ‘home duties’,
the majority of whom are, of course, women, were also still excluded
from social protection except as dependants (National reports, Ireland:
Barry 1996:7).
Portugal spends the lowest share of GDP on social protection but in
order to meet the Maastricht criteria introduced reforms to the welfare state
in 1994, including an increase in contribution years for a pension from 10

removing the automatic indexation mechanism—might be expected to have

had negative implications for gender pay equity, as more women were likely
to find themselves outside the protective collective bargaining net. Those
countries that targeted control of public sector wages, either as an end in
itself or as an example to private sector employees, are also likely to have
widened the gender pay gap, although the inadequate coverage of the public
sector within wage data sets prevents a full analysis.

Crisis in welfare state regimes

Reform of the welfare state came to be regarded in the 1990s as an essential
element of adjustment to changing competitive and demographic conditions.
The country whose economic problems have been identified most closely to
a crisis in its welfare state regime is Sweden. The basis of the Scandinavian
model involved the provision of high levels of benefits coupled with active
labour market policies which were designed to reduce the extent to which the

to 15 and equalising the female and male retirement age at 65, compared
to the 62 years previously set for women. Both these changes may
disadvantage women more than men, even though women have a high
participation rate. Moreover, one element of the reform, the introduction
of a new system of index linking the pension should benefit all recipients
(National reports, Portugal: Lopes and Perista 1996:6).
In Spain there is a need for more people to make contributions to
pensions, but Spain has a low employment rate due to a low participation
rate of women. Thus the entry of women into the formal economy is seen
as an essential element in welfare state reform (National reports, Spain:
Moltó 1996:5).
In Austria childcare in 1993 became recognised for the first time in
accumulation of credits for pension entitlement, although the credits
offered were still very low (National reports, Austria: Pastner 1996:94).
Women’s retirement age is to be equalised with men’s at 65 in 2019, and
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as part of the negotiations over this change some improvements in the

situation of women were agreed upon, including reforms to equal rights
laws and improvement in legislation for atypical workers (National reports,
Austria: Pastner 1996:5, 17).
Germany decided in 1996 to end its generous early retirement scheme
as this was being used by large employers as a means of adjusting their
labour forces (National reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:12).
To some extent the UK avoided the need to bring in pension reforms,
as the measures it took in the early 1980s ensured that the basic pension
will have no more than ‘nugatory value’, even according to government
sources, by the time most of the present workforce retire. Reliance has
increasingly been placed on private pensions, an area where women
tend to be strongly disadvantaged because of their low wages and less
continuous careers (National reports, UK: Rubery 1996:31)

Box 1.6 Policies to increase means-testing reduce women’s access

to benefits; but policies to extend coverage tend to bring more women
within the social security net

Ireland has a welfare system strongly based around the concept of a

male breadwinner, with many benefits means-tested, and some restricted
to one claimant per household. Changes in the 1990s have reinforced
these characteristics, thereby reducing women’s access to independent
benefits. Tighter restrictions were also imposed on the earnings of the
spouse in households claiming benefits, thus trapping more women into
dependency (National reports, Ireland: Barry 1996:7–8).
Reforms to the unemployment benefit system in Belgium in the first
half of the 1990s were particularly likely to have a negative impact for
women. First, the value of the flat-rate benefit paid to those unemployed
forced to withdraw temporarily from the labour market due to social and
family circumstances was seriously eroded. Almost all the unemployed
in this position were women (98 per cent in 1994). Second, those deemed
to be on unemployment benefit for an abnormally long period faced
possible withdrawal of benefit. The definition of ‘abnormally long’ was
changed from twice to one and a half times the average for the district
and gender. However, heads of households and single people were not
subject to having benefit withdrawn; this measure applied mainly to those
cohabiting but who were not heads of households, i.e. women (National
reports, Belgium: Meulders and Hecq 1996:18).
In Portugal the coverage of social security provided to freelance
workers was strengthened. These changes were aimed at increasing
revenues while at the same time extending benefits such as health care,

benefit payments would be activated. When the Swedish economy was no

longer able to maintain its commitment to full employment, its capacity to
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meet its benefit payments bill was called into question. While these problems
affected Sweden before joining the EU, its problems of reforming its welfare
state have continued since, for although it is not joining EMU in the first
phase, it has adopted a public expenditure policy in line with the convergence
criteria.
Other economies have also faced problems with funding the welfare
regime, but in some cases more as a result of other stronger economic
factors—for example, the collapse of trade in Finland and the costs of
unification in Germany. Yet other economies have faced problems with their
welfare regime triggered, at least to some extent, by the timetable of the
Maastricht Treaty. These problems, for example, led to a prolonged period of
industrial unrest in France in December 1995 and fuelled the political
problems in Italy, with proposed reforms to pension entitlements providing
the stimulus to protests in both countries. Changes of in both countries over the

maternity protection and insurance for old age to a larger share of the
population (National reports, Portugal: Lopes and Perista 1996:5).
In Sweden the approach to financial crisis was not to increase means-
testing for unemployment benefits but to decrease the level of benefit,
from 90 per cent to 75 per cent of earnings between 1995 and 1996.
However, more persons became reliant on means-tested benefits as more
ran out of entitlements as a consequence of persistent high unemployment
(National reports, Sweden: Gonäs and Spånt 1996:55).
In 1994 Finland stopped means-testing the basic unemployment
allowances payable after income-related benefits were exhausted.
However, after 1994 fewer persons received the allowance as eligibility
had become dependent upon the person being in employment at least 6
months out of the previous 24. Those who failed to qualify were eligible
for the labour market support benefit, which remained means-tested. The
extension of the child homecare allowance, coupled with other means-
tested household benefits, also served to trap some married women with
children into inactivity until their children reached the age of 3 because of
the high effective marginal tax rate if they tried to return to the labour
market (National reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:19).
In the UK the introduction of the Jobseeker’s Allowance in autumn
1996 reduced access to non-means-tested benefits from 12 to 6 months,
and also required jobseekers to be available for full-time work unless
they were deemed to have significant care responsibilities. The extension
during the 1990s of the Family Credit system, which provides benefits to
those in low-paid work, also trapped many women into dependency, owing
to the high marginal tax rates on the second income earner (National
reports, UK: Rubery 1996:163).

period 1996 to 1997 were also influenced by debates on how to cope with
the adjustment to the European convergence criteria.
Changes in the welfare state over the 1990s have involved changes to the
levels of benefit provision, to access rules, to the taxation of benefits and to
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

methods of financing provision. The dual concerns over meeting public

expenditure targets and coping with changing demographics meant that most
countries considered and many implemented pension reforms (see Box 1.5).
Where these involved extending the period of employment required for full
pension rights, or reduced the relative value of guaranteed state pension, the
impact is likely to be particularly negative for women. However, these reforms
were also undertaken in a context of increasing awareness of a demand for
enhanced rights for women, and many countries at the same time introduced
or extended pension credits for those taking a career break to look after
children. These reforms, while on the one hand recognising women’s domestic
labour, also tended to reinforce sex roles within the family.
Another tendency was to increase the importance of means-testing in benefit
provision. Where insurance principles were maintained, conditions of eligibility

Box 1.7 Family policy changes extend leaves but lower benefits or
increase means testing
In France child allowances were not uprated in 1996, thus reducing their
value in real terms, and family allowances were in future to be classed as
taxable income. Earlier reforms extended subsidies to women staying at
home with a second child, instead of the previous system which only
paid with the third child (National reports, France: Silvera et al. 1996:13,
Gauvin et al 1994:5).
Denmark introduced a wide range of leave arrangements or schemes
in the early 1990s, primarily to improve work sharing, but providing increased
opportunities for parental leave without loss of labour market position. Most
leave-takers were women, and most leave has been taken for family reasons.
The scheme clearly has helped to reconcile work and family life, but risks
reinforcing women’s responsibility for the family, and could encourage the
cutback of childcare provision (National reports, Denmark: Boje 1994, 1995).
Most support for children in Ireland has been provided in means-tested
benefits to unemployed households. This policy has trapped many
households, and women in particular, in inactivity and benefit dependency.
Concern about poverty led to a slight shift in policy, with the non-means-
tested child benefits uprated significantly and more than other benefits in
1995 (National reports, Ireland: Barry 1996:8).
Part of the Global Plan of 1993 in Belgium involved the further
promotion of career breaks in the private sector, such schemes having
been well established in the public sector for some time. This promotion
was part of the policy of work redistribution, which was formulated in
apparently sex-neutral terms but which in practice mainly affected women.
In 1994 87.5 per cent of those taking a career break were women (National
reports, Belgium: Meulders and Hecq 1996:16).
In 1991 in Austria childcare leave, which is paid but at a low level,
was extended from one to two years. This resulted in a high take-up rate
among women, and in practice few returned to work at the end of the two
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years. The high take-up brought about a debate in Austria over the expense
and in 1996 there was a reduction to 18 months unless the father took at
least 6 months’ leave (National reports, Austria: Pastner 1996:97).
Sweden still has perhaps the most generous family policies, but these
were undergoing significant change in the first half of the 1990s. Parental

for insurance payments were tightened or the duration of benefits reduced,

thus forcing a higher share of claimants onto means-tested benefits (see Box
1.6). Moreover, increasing shares of benefit recipients were without insurance
cover, either because cover had been exhausted or because of the increased
difficulty of building up eligibility in the first place. Women tend to benefit
less than men from insurance-based benefits as they are less able to fulfil the
eligibility requirements, and the tightening of eligibility rules are likely to

allowances were reduced to 75 per cent of previous earnings and child

allowances were cut by 15 per cent from January 1996. The cost of
childcare services was being increasingly passed on to parents but this
was in part offset by a new requirement that local authorities had to provide
childcare for children aged 1 to 12 if parents were working or studying
(National reports, Sweden: Gonäs and Spånt 1996:9–10).
In Finland the first half of the decade saw the introduction of the child
homecare allowance which allowed all parents, even those without a job,
to have paid leave up until the child was 3. However, the parental allowance
was reduced from a maximum of 80 per cent to a maximum of 66 per cent.
Child allowances were first increased in the early 1990s but from July
1995 were again reduced (National reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:16).
Germany withdrew parental leave allowances for high-income
households in 1994 and reduced child benefits for third and fourth children
for higher income households. Families were required to choose between
child benefits or child tax allowances. In principle the government was
committed to providing childcare for children aged 3 to 6 by the deal
struck when abortion laws were harmonised between East and West.
However, the Länder postponed meeting this commitment until 1996 and
instead of increasing resources to childcare, planned to reallocate funds
and reduce the quality of care. Thus there was no real reorientation of
the German welfare state away from transfers towards services. Moreover,
the East German system of providing social welfare, from cheap family
holidays to hot meals in canteens, was disbanded and access to childcare
reduced (National reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:14, 18).
The UK introduced new legislation providing maternity leave rights to
all employees, a change in policy forced upon the UK Conservative
government by the passing of the EC directive on maternity leave (National
reports, UK: Rubery 1996:24). The government also tried to reduce state
support for lone mothers by requiring fathers to provide support instead of
the state. This policy initiative was both inept in its implementation and
extremely unpopular, particularly with men. In the area of childcare the
Conservative government agreed to extend provision for pre-school children,
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

but its proposed method of delivery—through a voucher system—

threatened to undermine the viability of the limited state provision for the
most needy families (National reports, UK: Rubery 1996:31). The incoming
Labour government abandoned the voucher scheme but announced plans
to expand nursery and after-school provision.

increase these problems. However, while women may be more often forced
to fall back on social assistance measures even under systems where main
benefits are insurance-based, fewer women are eligible for means-tested
benefits as they are more frequently living in households with an employed
spouse. Some countries’ benefit reforms were particularly likely to affect
women: for example in Belgium, heads of households were explicitly excluded
from some of the benefit reforms, and in the UK benefit entitlements were

restricted to those available for 40 hours of work (see Box 1.6). Against these
trends there were some moves to extend the coverage of benefit systems, to
bring a wider section of the population within the social security net, and
indeed thereby to widen the tax basis for contributions to old age and other
forms of social protection.
Policy changes related to the provision of support for families and for women’s
domestic role tended to involve reductions in benefit levels, or more targeted
benefits through use of means-testing or taxation, coupled with longer leave
entitlements (see Box 1.7). In some countries, notably the Scandinavian countries,
there were cutbacks in the level of benefits for those on maternity leave, although
in common with other countries such as Austria and France, increased
opportunities were provided to prolong leaves or to enjoy family support with
the second instead of previously with the third child (see Box 1.7). Policies
such as extensions of leave could, however, be considered as a means of
reinforcing gender roles, while the cutback in benefit levels reduced women’s
independent income and thus again served to increase dependency on men.

Box 1.8 Cutbacks in public sector employment threaten women’s

jobs, but in some countries the public sector has still provided more
stable employment than the private sector

In the mid-1990s Greece was engaged in a major privatisation programme

which threatened to increase gender inequality in both pay and promotion
prospects. The public sector in Greece traditionally operated a policy of
narrow wage dispersion and women also made more progress in moving
up the career ladder in the public than in the private sphere (National
reports, Greece: Cavouriaris and Symeonidou 1996:7).
In Denmark, public sector employment proved to be more stable over
the cycle than private sector employment. Women have tended to become
over-represented in unemployment when the private sector expands
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

relative to the public sector: This occurred in the mid-1980s and again in
1994, although the expanded leave programmes could disguise these
trends to some extent if unemployed women participate in the schemes
(National reports, Denmark: Boje 1996:9).
In Spain public sector employment has traditionally proved more stable
than private sector employment but in 1994 private sector employment
started to expand while public sector employment continued to fall. Further
cutbacks were threatened and although private services have increased
in importance, the quality of job opportunities in the private service sector
has not compared with that in the public sector (National reports, Spain:
Moltó 1996:7–8, 22).
Up until even the end of the 1980s much of the Austrian industry and
finance sector was in public ownership. Since that time there has been a
major privatisation programme. Meeting the Maastricht criteria led to further

Yet perhaps the most notable characteristic of the reforms was the absence
of any radical transforming policies to bring welfare state systems up to date
with the new complexities of household and family organisation and with
the changing role of women in particular. There were some minor
modifications to those conservative welfare state models based on the
insurance principle, to accommodate increased access for women to benefits,
but there has been no rethink of the fundamental bases of policies. Moreover,
in those welfare states where progress had previously been made towards a
fully individualised system—that is, where there was little or no expectation
that women would be economically dependent upon men—there was some
modification and in part a reversal of this policy approach.
The impact of the increasing concern to control the costs of the welfare
state was felt not only in benefit provision and transfer payments but also in
the provision of services, and in the level and quality of employment within
the public sector (see Box 1.8). Recent employment trends have not all pointed
in the direction of a declining public sector, in part because any downturn in

cutbacks in the state’s involvement in the economy, in particular restricting

its ability to use publicly funded construction projects to offset recessions.
This policy change in the first instance primarily affected men (National
reports, Austria: Pastner 1996:4).
Around half of Swedish women work in the public sector. Employment
fell in the public sector by 7 per cent for women and by 2 per cent for men
between 1991 and 1995, and while private sector employment started to
rise in 1995, that in the public sector remained static or continued to fall.
Public sector employment has been of double importance for women in
Sweden as it has facilitated the high participation of women in the labour
market—through the provision of care services—as well as boosting
demand for female labour (National reports, Sweden: Gonäs and Spånt
1996: Appendix Tables 4, 5).
By the mid-1990s public sector employment in Finland, at least in the
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

municipalities sector, had remained more stable than that in the private
sector. However, new systems of budget management within the public
sector, which allow municipalities more freedom as to how to organise
the provision of services, might yet herald major cutbacks in employment
(National reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:9, 25).
In the UK major changes were made in the organisation of public
sector employment. Large areas of the public sector were subject to
competitive tendering and although most tenders were won by public
sector employees, the result was a deterioration in pay and conditions,
especially for female manual workers. The EC directive on the transfer of
undertakings reduced the opportunities to use poor terms and conditions
of employment as part of the competitive tendering process (National
reports, UK: Rubery 1996:119).

the public sector may have been masked by the even poorer employment
performance in the private sector. However, while the public sector has been
an agent of female employment growth in most of the post-war period, there
are signs emerging of major cutbacks in employment growth or even
employment levels, with significant consequences for women. These trends
have been most evident so far in Sweden, which had in any case the largest
share of public sector employees within Europe, but in line with the common
impact of the convergence criteria, countries such as Spain also registered
relative falls in public sector employment. Even more common is the tendency
for pressure on public sector expenditure to lead to efforts to contain costs,
either through wage control policies or through privatisation of public services
and activities (Box 1.8).

Labour market flexibility, employment creation and work sharing

Government labour market policy can be argued to have been directed at

three rather different objectives: increased competitiveness, employment
creation and redistribution of work (Box 1.9). While policies to meet these
three objectives may at times all pull in the same direction, there can be no
necessary presumption that this is the case. Indeed, similar policy measures
may be enacted in one member state primarily with one or other objective in
mind, while in another member state the policy has quite a different primary
focus or objective.
This likelihood can be illustrated with respect to a range of policies, including
for example non-wage labour costs. In some countries there were moves to
reduce these costs across the board in the interests of both competitiveness
and general job creation, but in other cases the reductions were targeted at
those employers actually creating jobs or offering jobs to hard to place groups
(see Box 1.10). Deregulation of the labour market, through weakening of
controls on hirings and dismissals, can similarly be presented as either a policy
to enhance competitiveness by reducing bureaucracy and removing unworkable
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regulations (e.g. in Italy) or a policy to redistribute access to work by, for

example, reducing segmentation between permanent and temporary workers,
as has been the case in Spain. Neither the motives for such policies nor their
effects on women can be considered clear or unambiguous. While policies to
reduce non-wage labour costs may be expected to stimulate demand most in
low-wage jobs, often dominated by women, these cutbacks in contributions
often go hand in hand with reforms to the welfare state, as we saw above,
which often act against the interests of women.
Promotion of flexibility not only has different objectives but is also pursued
through very different types of policies (see Box 1.9). In some cases the
emphasis was on extending rights, thereby making flexible employment
contracts more acceptable to employees and ensuring more equal treatment.
Such policies can be regarded as beneficial to women, except to the extent
that they have led to a growth of part-time work and a reinforcement of

gender roles in the labour market and in the household. In other cases the
emphasis was on deregulation or on the simplification of the framework of
regulations to promote the use of flexible employment among employers.
Sometimes policies were more specifically targeted at employment-creation
and work-sharing policies in which subsidies were available if flexible
employment policies led to work sharing or to the hiring of ‘hard to place’
workers.
Flexible employment includes not only part-time and temporary contracts,
but also an increasing range of leave arrangements or partial employment
contracts which allow flexibility over the life cycle or staged entry into
retirement, and other non-standard contracts such as training contracts which
may facilitate initial entry or re-entry into the labour market. Many of these
measures are more likely to involve women than men, although one of the
notable features of recent years has been an increasing involvement of men
within flexible employment schemes. In some cases this male involvement
reflected declines in male job opportunities, especially among young people;
the increased precariousness of the youth labour market has been a constant
theme of the 1990s. However, in other cases men’s involvement—for example
in partial early retirement schemes and the like—also demonstrates gender
divisions even within flexible employment. Men may still enjoy better rights
and benefits—for example continued full-time insurance—if they move into
flexible jobs from full-time employment or unemployment than is the case
for women, who often enter into flexible employment directly from inactivity
(Rubery 1998a).
A more positive approach to flexible labour markets is to focus on creating
a skilled and flexible workforce through expanded education and training
provision. The 1990s saw the reinforcement of trends toward universal upper
secondary level education, with the raising of school leaving ages in some of
the Southern European countries: in Portugal from 14 to 15 and in Italy and
Spain from 14 to 16. These changes have tended to equalise the basic system
of educational provision throughout the EU. However, major differences in
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vocational education and training remain. Some countries, such as Austria

and Germany, still have very well developed and extensive vocational training
systems, known as the dual training system, while other countries still place
greater emphasis on educational qualifications than on vocational skills.
Nevertheless, vocational training was also expanded in some countries in
part as a response to unemployment, and in part as a direct result of EU aid
for training, particularly in Southern European countries.
A strong system of vocational training based on the dual system of work
experience and education, as in the Austrian and German models, seems to
be associated with a relatively low unemployment rate among young people,
which may be particularly beneficial to young women, as in most countries
their unemployment rate tends to exceed that of young men. These training
systems still, however, act to segment the labour market by gender and also
often reinforce men’s position as skilled workers as many female-type skills

Box 1.9 Flexibility policies take different forms and fulfil different
objectives

In Spain there was a major reform of labour market regulation away from
the system of legal regulation. The new policy did not fully embrace
deregulation, as the principle of universal coverage for collective bargaining
continued to be accepted. But collective bargaining was in practice uneven,
leaving scope for some sectors to be relatively unregulated. The aim of
reducing divisions between those in permanent and those in temporary
jobs was not fully realised. Employers, still unclear as to the exact implications
of the changes, continued to prefer to use temporary contracts rather than
risk the decisions of the Labour Courts. The labour market reform also
aimed to increase part-time jobs, an objective which appeared to be being
realised, as 38 per cent of the new jobs in the third quarter of 1995 were
part-time (National reports, Spain: Moltó 1996:2).
The Netherlands had the highest ratio of employed persons to full-
time equivalent labour years, at 1.19 compared to a European average
of 1.04, in 1991. Short working hours may be an indication of labour
under-utilisation or evidence of a successful work redistribution policy.
However, most of the redistribution is among women, where the employed
persons to full-time equivalent labour years is 1.49, against a European
average of 1.14. (National reports, Netherlands: Plantenga et al. 1996:5).
The policy used to promote part-time work and work sharing was through
legislation designed to prevent or reduce any distinctions between part-
time and full-time employees. In this respect redistribution policy took
precedence over policies to reduce labour costs and increase flexibility
(National reports, Netherlands: Plantenga et al. 1996:8).
Luxembourg stood out against any policy of deregulation, and even
strengthened regulations against collective dismissals and provided new
rights for part-timers, such as overtime pay for hours above contractual
hours (National reports, Luxembourg: Plasman 1996:9, 14).
In Italy there was a growth of work sharing through solidarity contracts,
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in the early 1990s, in part as an unplanned response to the rising problem

of threatened redundancy. Other policies to promote new working-time
and flexibility arrangements were more haphazardly applied (National
reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa 1996:4). However, in 1998 there was
evidence of a renewed interest by the government in using reductions in
working-time as a means of improving worksharing as a new law was
introduced to promote a 35-hour week, despite widespread opposition
from employers.
In France public policy in the first half of the 1990s promoted external
flexibility by weakening dismissal laws and allowing new forms of less
binding employment contracts, together with work sharing through
subsidies for part-time and short-time working where these prevented

redundancy or created new jobs, and job creation through subsidies to

take on the unemployed (National reports, France: Silvera et al. 1996:20).
The use of reduced working-time to help to create and protect jobs took
on a new momentum after the election of the Jospin government in 1996
and the development of the new legislation to introduce a 35-hour week
in France.
Employment protection, covering a range of issues from holiday
entitlement to unfair dismissal protection, was extended to part-timers in
Ireland under a 1991 act (National reports, Ireland: Barry 1996:9).
In Belgium the encouragement of part-time employment, career breaks
and temporary employment contracts was embedded in a range of
measures included within the 1993 Global Plan and the multi-annual
employment plans. Companies were encouraged to draw up plans to
redistribute work which in practice concentrated strongly on part-time
and career break options. Although in principle these measures promoted
work sharing in general, in practice both part-time and career breaks
primarily concern women. More women are also employed on temporary
contracts and the Global Plan allowed the issuing of up to four temporary
contracts, provided the total duration does not exceed two years (National
reports, Belgium: Meulders and Hecq 1996:25). However, the Belgium
government, along with French, Italian and Portuguese governments,
has in the late 1990s renewed its interest in using reduced working-time
to fight unemployment (IDS 1998a: 2)
In Germany there has been consistent pressure from the unions for a
shorter working week in the interests of work sharing. Both the government
and employers sought to combine this change in number of working hours
with greater working-time flexibility. In May 1994 a new act was passed
allowing more flexibility in scheduling and abolishing special protections
for women. Labour market policy has tended to be discussed as a tripartite
policy between the government, employers and unions, a forum in which
the interests of women have rarely been taken explicitly into account.
(National reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:39, 43).
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In the UK the thrust of Conservative government policy in the 1990s

was to deregulate the labour market in the interests of flexibility and the
maintenance of competitiveness. There was no commitment on the part
of the Conservative government to stimulate work sharing and to date
the incoming Labour government has not departed from this policy
(National reports, UK: Rubery 1996:128).
The Portuguese socialist government, elected in 1996, has joined with
other European governments in seeking to reduce working hours to help
with the unemployment problem, but in the Portuguese case the hours
were cut from 44 hours, the longest standard hours in Europe, to 40 hours,
a level achieved many years ago in other parts of Europe (IDS 1998b).

Box 1.10 Towards lower non-wage labour costs: a female friendly

policy?

In the Netherlands debates over employment policy have been conducted

without reference to their potential impact on the female segment of the
labour market (National reports, Netherlands: Plantenga et al. 1996:8).
For example, there was no debate on the gender consequences of a
measure to reduce employers’ labour costs on jobs with wages up to 115
per cent of the minimum wage or of a proposal to allow low wage jobs to
be created for the long-term unemployed.
Employers’ costs have been reduced in Luxembourg by exempting
them from contributions to family allowances (previously 1.75 per cent of
the gross wage) (National reports, Luxembourg: Plasman 1996:10).
In Italy some reductions were applied to social security contributions
on part-time jobs, as strict proportionality is believed to result in higher
wage costs for part-timers (National reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa 1996:5).
In France contributions still accounted for 78 per cent of social security
expenditure in 1993 but the trend in policy was to begin to switch taxation
away from employers towards employees and general taxation, notably
through the introduction of the General Social Security Contribution levied
on earnings. Employers were also allowed to pay lower child benefit
contributions on low-wage jobs. In addition they were given full or partial
exemption from non-wage costs when par ticipating in various
employmentcreation or work-sharing initiatives, including creating part-time
jobs in the interests of work sharing, thereby reversing previous discrimination
against low-wage jobs (National reports, France: Silvera et al. 1996:8–10).
Belgium, as part of the Global Plan of 1993, reduced employers’
contributions on low-paid jobs by up to 50 per cent, dependent upon the
level of remuneration. Although a large number of jobs were subject to
reductions, the impact on job creation is unclear. Significant reductions in
non-wage labour costs were also made available to employers for hiring the
young unemployed (National reports, Belgium: Meulders and Hecq 1996:6).
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Spain introduced a general reduction in employers’ contributions in

1995 as a means of trying to stimulate job creation. It also pledged to
move further towards the principle of proportionality in social security
contributions, away from a system based on maximum ceilings which had
the effect of penalising employers of workers in low-paid jobs more than
employers of those in high-paid jobs (National reports, Spain: Moltó 1996:4).
In Finland some of the cost of social security contributions was
redistributed from employers to employees in the 1990s in an effort to
stimulate job creation (National reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:9).
In Germany some steps were taken to reduce non-wage costs such
as the cancellation of the early retirement programme and the introduction
of a long-term care insurance, the first scheme to involve only contributions
from employees (National reports, Germany: Maier et al. 1996:18).

Table 1.3 Gender composition of participants in initial

vocational education and training by gender, 1993–1994

Source: CEC (1997b).

may not be included (see Chapter 5). Indeed, Table 1.3 gives the percentage
of participants in initial vocational education and training by gender and
reveals a systematic gender gap in favour of men, except in Finland and
Ireland. Some countries have been enacting policies to try to redress these
gender inequalities. Austria has extended its apprenticeship system to cover
service sector areas and in Denmark there has been a marked equalisation
upwards of the share of women who are now vocationally qualified, compared
to earlier generations. Some other countries which have been attempting to
follow the German model by developing and strengthening apprenticeships
have not necessarily been so successful in extending these opportunities to
women. For example, women hold only one-third of places in the new French
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apprenticeship system, and in the UK the recently introduced modern

apprenticeship system appears to be focused on male-dominated job areas.
Young women have, however, been taking action to counter discrimination
in both the labour market and the education and training system (see Chapter
3). Not only are they participating more in higher education, they are also
becoming more ‘efficient’ at completing their education than their male
counterparts, for example in Italy where the time taken to complete is highly
variable.
One type of policy which largely remained off the agenda of member states
in the first half of the 1990s, with the possible exception of Germany, was
that of reductions in full-time working weeks (see Box 1.9). The absence of a
significant debate around moving towards a shorter working week reflected
not only the dominance of competitiveness objectives over work-sharing
objectives but the continuation of policies designed to shore up the male

breadwinner model of household organisation. Part-time work was seen as a

more acceptable method of income and work sharing—as it normally impacted
on women and young people—than any policy which, if the cuts in working
hours were not fully funded, might further undermine the earning capacities
of men and reinforce a dual-earner model of household organisation. However,
the second half of the 1990s has seen a revival of debate, and indeed an
enactment of new laws and measures to reduce standard working-time in
France, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands (see Box 1.9). This
renewed interest in the use of working-time policy for reducing unemployment
reflects both the persistence of unemployment and the changed political
landscape, with governments of the left elected in France, Portugal and Italy
in 1995 and 1996.

Equal opportunities policy

In the first half of the 1990s there were relatively few initiatives in most
European member states in the field of equal opportunities, with the exception
primarily of the Scandinavian countries, and where action was proposed or
taken the results were weak or even non-existent. This lack of attention to
equal opportunities in national policies was revealed in the multi-annual plans
which the member states drew up on employment policy following the Essen
summit agreement, and in which equal opportunities issues were hardly
referenced (Meulders 1996; Bettio et al. 1998b).
Several examples can be found of countries which started the decade with
good intentions but in practice failed to take the necessary action to implement
their policies once they became distracted by the impact of the recession and
other policy priorities. For example, Italy in 1991 passed a law not only
sanctioning but also providing incentives for positive action, redefined the
role and status of equal opportunity agencies and expanded the definition of
discrimination to include statistical discrimination. But it is perhaps symptomatic
of the 1990s that the act proved to be largely ineffective, as attention focused
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on the problem faced by men during the recession and on the dramatic declines
in fertility (see Chapter 3). Ireland established a new government department
in 1993 under a Minister for Equality and Law Reform, with responsibility
for monitoring, co-ordinating and evaluating all policy proposals with reference
to their impact on women and minority groups. However, commitments in
the early 1990s to amend existing employment law legislation and to introduce
equal status legislation to outlaw discrimination in non-employment areas
had still not been fully implemented by 1998.
Germany has introduced more measures related to equal opportunities
but this activity was related to the consequences of unification. The changes
to its equal opportunities legislation were made in order to reduce, to some
extent, the gap between West and East Germany in its approach to equality.
However, the impact so far has been relatively slight and the main effect of

unification has been to impose the West German legal situation on East
Germany. Some positive advances were made, including for example a
requirement on works councils to include equal opportunities in their agenda
and a blanket law banning sexual harassment in the workplace. Positive action
plans, including rights to part-time work at all levels of the hierarchy, were,
however, confined to the public sector (National reports, Germany: Maier et
al. 1996:44–45).
One of the main areas of activity in equal opportunities has been initiatives
which require organisations to carry out equality audits and/or develop
equality action plans. Scandinavia has been at the forefront of these
developments. From 1991 onwards public institutions in Denmark have been
effectively required to develop annual plans for equality and although an
evaluation in 1993 found these actions still to be less than satisfactory, in
1995 parliament responded by strengthening the requirement to draw up
action plans, with targets for women in managerial jobs and with proposals
for reconciliation between work and family life. In Sweden and Finland the
requirement for plans extended to the private sector: for firms with more
than 10 employees in Sweden and with more than 30 employees in Finland.
In Sweden the plans mainly focused on reducing pay differentials, while in
Finland they covered recruitment and selection, pay and sexual harassment.
Belgium too enacted legislation requiring reports on equality issues to be
presented to works councils and positive action plans to be drawn up in the
public sector, and permitting such plans in the private sector. In the UK there
was the launch of a major voluntary initiative to monitor and improve
women’s position within organisations but this is a purely voluntary system,
albeit receiving the backing of the government (see Chapter 2). The impact
of these initiatives has yet to be assessed but it should be remembered that
France has had legislation since 1983 allowing for equality plans and for
equality audits, but the number of companies developing such plans has been
very small, affecting only around 30 companies (Chalude et al. 1994; de
Jong and Bock 1995).
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There are two other areas in which equal opportunities initiatives at member
state level were evident in the early 1990s: as regards wages and job
classifications and with respect to helping unemployed women (see Box 1.9
for measures with respect to rights of part-timers, for example in the
Netherlands). In Spain and Portugal there were efforts to remove gender
from job titles in job classification schemes (CEC 1996a). In Finland a joint
working group was set up to investigate ways in which work can be evaluated
under the principle of equal value. In Sweden wage plans were required to be
approved by the local Equal Opportunities Ombudsman. Measures to help
unemployed women were also taken in a number of countries, but these were
either part of general programmes to help vulnerable groups or were intended
to offset the discrimination faced by women in gaining access to active labour
market programmes because such schemes tended to be targeted on the
registered unemployed in receipt of benefits. Some of the measures involved

help with childcare, some gave help to train in non-traditional areas, others
simply offered training opportunities, on a full or sometimes part-time basis.
While a range of measures can be identified which were adopted at the
nation state level to develop equal opportunities, the European Union has
been responsible for many of the measures implemented, or changes made to
legislation within member states. The European Union provided direct
assistance to equal opportunities through its NOW (New Opportunities for
Women) programmes1 which provided for structural funds to be targeted
specifically on equal opportunities (Rees 1995a, 1995b, 1998). In addition,
the European Union legislative framework has been a significant influence
on the direction of equal opportunities policy in member states. The new
legislation or initiatives have included the directive on maternity leave, the
directive on the reconciliation of work and family life providing for parental
leave, the memorandum on equal value and the memorandum on sexual
harassment. More recently still, the European Union in December 1997
adopted two directives, one to give equal rights to part-timers and one to
shift the burden of proof in sex equality cases (see Box 1.1). Furthermore, the
EU has adopted equal opportunities as its fourth pillar of employment policy
under the new employment guidelines, and this decision may help to stimulate
member states at least to assess and identify their equal opportunities
employment policy agenda.
However, not all interventions from Europe were positive for equal
opportunity within member states in the 1990s. The European Court considered
that the laws on positive action in Bremen were incompatible with European
law by granting women automatic preference if they had equal qualifications
with a man. Most of the German state laws do allow for individual circumstances
to be taken into account and thus might not be found illegal. However, the
potential damage that this decision could have had on member states’ positive
action programmes has been reduced by the inclusion in the Amsterdam Treaty
agreed in June 1997 of a provision for positive action. This change in European
law through the Amsterdam Treaty was facilitated by the change in government
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in the UK just immediately prior to the Amsterdam Summit, as the previous

government had been hostile to any amendment which would allow for positive
action. There have been other examples, again involving German cases, in which
the European court has found against women’s interests, for example in the
1995 ruling that it was acceptable for part-timers to be excluded from social
protection when working under 15 hours a week, or to be excluded from overtime
payments when working more than their normal hours (CEC 1997d: 98; IDS
1996a: 3). Another example of a case which went against women’s interests
was the Barber case on pensions, which has led to many member states equalising
women’s pension ages upwards to those of men, an unwelcome overspill from
the principle of equal treatment. However, other cases did much to strengthen
and clarify the meaning of equal opportunities. For example, the Danfoss case
established the need for transparency in equal pay claims (CEC 1997d: 104),
and cases taken against the British Conservative government established that

Table 1.4 Employment rates by gender in the European Union, 1989–1996

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Sources: European Labour Force Survey (1989–1996); data for Sweden, Austria, Finland and E15 are from CEC (1996b, 1997c).

Fagan, C, Rubery, J, & Smith, M 1999, Women's Employment in Europe : Trends and Prospects, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford.
Notes
(u) data include the New German Länder.
(w) data exclude the New German Länder.
—indicates no data available.
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Table 1.5 Unemployment rates by gender in the European Union, 1989–1996

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Sources: European Labour Force Survey (1989–1996); data for Sweden, Austria, Finland and E15 are from CEC (1996b, 1997c).

unequal rights for part-timers could be considered a form of indirect

discrimination (Dickens 1995). Moreover, these decisions have led to actual
changes in national law; for example in the UK part-timers are now covered by
unfair dismissal and redundancy protection whereas previously most of those
working less than 16 hours were excluded.

The impact of the changing economic and political

conditions on men and women: gender and country
differences

On average men suffered somewhat more than women from the recession of
the early 1990s. In most countries the employment rate for men fell faster
than that for women, and their unemployment rates rose faster in absolute
and proportional terms. Men’s employment fell by well over 4 percentage
points between 1989 to 1994 at the E12 level (using ELFS (European Labour
Force Survey) data both including and excluding East Germany), and by
nearly 5 percentage points if we consider the fall from the peak in 1990 to
the trough in 1994 (see Tables 1.4 and 1.5). Since 1994 the employment rate
has stabilised but not shown an upward trend. A similar picture emerges if
we look at Employment in Europe data for the E15 level (CEC 1996b; 1997c).
Between 1991 and 1996, the male employment rate fell by nearly 5 percentage
points. Including the new member states thus tends to worsen the male
employment performance for Europe as a whole. In contrast, the female
employment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points between 1989 and 1994, and
even from its peak in 1992 only registered a fall of just over a quarter of a
percentage point before rising again to a new high of 49 per cent in 1996. If
the former East Germany is included there is a larger fall between 1991 and
1994, but the average female employment rate is also higher, as it is at the
E15 level with the new member states. For the E15, the female employment
rate fell by 0.8 percentage points between 1991 and 1994 but recovered to
just 0.2 percentage points below the 1991 peak by 1996.
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There was also some convergence of female employment rates during the
1990s, as falls tended to occur in those countries with the highest female
employment rates, in particular Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the UK. In
some countries there was also a marked convergence of male and female
employment rates, as a consequence either of very poor employment
performance for men or of rising female employment in the face of the
recession. The gender gap in employment rates narrowed by more than 5
percentage points between 1990 and 1996 in Belgium, the former West
Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria
and the UK. We also find some narrowing of the gender gap in unemployment
rates, but less dramatic than that for employment (see Tables 1.4 and 1.5). In
11 countries female unemployment rates exceeded male rates throughout the
period, with the gap only narrowing noticeably in 6 countries. In Ireland,

Table 1.6 Youth unemployment rates by gender in the European Union, 1989–1996

Created from kcl on 2024-03-03 21:28:29.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [3 March 2024].
Source: European Labour Force Survey (1989–1996); data for Sweden, Austria, Finland and E15 are from CEC (1996b, 1997c).

male and female unemployment rates remained roughly similar over the same
period while the UK, Finland and Sweden all started off the period with
relatively equal unemployment rates by gender, but by 1994 male
unemployment rates were at least 3 percentage points higher than female
unemployment rates in each country. Thus much of the narrowing at the E15
level is attributable to the emergence of higher male unemployment rates in
these three countries.
The trends within E15 as a whole and within the majority of the EU member
states do provide some grounds for the increased concern expressed over men’s
employment prospects in the mid 1990s: overall men fared relatively badly in
both employment and unemployment terms. These trends have given rise to
increasing public concern over employment opportunities for unemployed men,
and young men in particular. During the 1990s recession young male
unemployment rates rose faster than those for young females, although on average
female youth unemployment rates were still higher (Table 1.6). The focus on
youth unemployment as the target for employment policy has been fuelled by a
concern about what will happen to young men, in particular, who are excluded
from the labour market; concern not only over their opportunities and life chances
but also over the implications for levels of violence and crime in the community.
While the previous method of allocating the scarce resource—employment—
through the exclusion of women has broken down, it has yet to be replaced with
a new and socially acceptable system of distributing available work and rationing
access to employment. A golden age of full employment when young people
experienced no difficulty in finding work is frequently invoked, but without
acknowledgement of the low levels of female employment at that time. Young
people are the outsiders on the labour market and for this reason they, together
with many older women who are still outside or only partially integrated into
wage work, tend to bear the burden of unemployment and job shortage. This
burden has increasingly taken the form of casual and part-time work as well as
periods of unemployment (see Box 1.11). There is thus some evidence of greater
equality between men and women in their involvement in precarious employment,
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

a consequence of the deteriorating opportunities for young people to move into

relatively secure employment. Placing the burden of adjustment on young people
would not necessarily be regarded as an insuperable problem if there were good
prospects that after a period of part-time or casual employment they would be
able to make the transition into permanent and secure full-time work. However,
the destabilisation of the employment system is such that flexible work appears
to act more as a trap for the most disadvantaged young people than as a bridge
for easing the transition from education to work (see Box 1.11). These deteriorating
prospects for men in general, and for young people in particular, have meant
that demonstration of unequal opportunity for women in absolute terms is no
longer necessarily sufficient to win the argument that policy should be directed
at improving the position of women in the labour market. The 1990s have
witnessed the re-emergence of significant labour market problems for men and
have refocused attention on the problem of the distribution of work, both between

Box 1.11 The increasing casualisation of the youth labour market

In Italy in 1992 two-thirds of new entrants into manual work in

manufacturing, most of whom were young men, were on temporary
contacts, while in non-manual work in manufacturing, a gender-mixed
occupation, two thirds were still on permanent full-time contracts. The
casualisation of the youth labour market thus tends to be seen as a male
problem, but if data on the service sector were available this view might
have to be revised (National reports, Italy: Bettio and Villa 1996:8).
Young people join women in Spain as the main group of latecomers to
the labour market who thereby share the burden of unemployment and
casualisation in a period of severe job shortage. The gender gap in the
shares on a temporary contract has been narrowing as a consequence of
the concentration of temporary contracts on the young where men and
women are relatively equally represented (National reports, Spain: Moltó
1996:24).
In Finland there has been a rapid increase in the share of temporary
contracts among new hires—from 38 per cent in 1989 to 60 per cent in
1993. Women predominate among temporary job holders (National
reports, Finland: Keinänen 1996:27).
In the UK increased equality between young people has been brought
about through a levelling down of the prospects for young men. More young
men have become involved in part-time work, a trend which has been
fuelled by the reduction in financial support for students and the withdrawal
of access to benefits, thereby forcing increased reliance on family and
household support. The possibilities for young people to make an early
transition to adult independence have been reduced (National reports,
UK: Rubery 1996:27).

the sexes and between the generations. It is undoubtedly significant that at the
1997 Luxembourg Jobs Summit, the main quantitative targets agreed by the
member states related to the provision of training and work placements for the
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long-term unemployed and the young unemployed, with targets for the fourth
pillar, equal opportunities, left unspecified (see Chapter 9).
However, against this diagnosis of relatively poor performance for men
must be set the following factors. First, women’s measured unemployment
remained higher than men’s in most EU countries and for the EU as a whole
(see Chapter 4); second, women’s measured unemployment is more likely to
understate the true rate of female unemployment more than is the case for
men; third, women’s employment rates fell by less but from lower levels; and
fourth, women’s employment rates were in some cases boosted by the growth
of part-time jobs. In some countries, the extension of leave arrangements for
parents also exaggerated the share of women in employment (see Box 1.7).
Most seriously of all, the downturn in women’s employment has come against
a background of fairly consistent rises in women’s employment over the past

two decades and perhaps indicates the beginning of a period in which structural
change is likely to work against the interests of women in the labour market.

Summary: swimming against the tide

During the first half of the 1990s the gap between male and female employment
rates continued to narrow, reinforcing the trends during the 1970s and 1980s
towards more equal participation in wage work by men and women.
Unemployment continued to be higher for women than for men but again,
the gender difference was reduced. Meanwhile, equal opportunities policy
has been given a higher profile at the European level, the EU has committed
itself to mainstreaming gender into general labour market and social policy
and the European member states have agreed to common employment
guidelines which involve commitments to both the promotion of women’s
employment and equal opportunities.
However, this upbeat summary of recent trends in women’s employment
position hides some worrying developments. First, the narrowing of the
employment and unemployment gaps has, particularly in some member states,
resulted mainly from a reduction in male employment rates. Second, much of
the demand for female labour has been boosted by the opportunity to employ
women in more flexible and often low-paid jobs. Third, the next stage of
economic restructuring appears set to be relatively less favourable to women’s
traditional employment areas. Particularly vulnerable areas are the public
sector and clerical employment in sectors such as banking. Fourth, while
equal opportunities policy has been placed on the policy agenda of the
European Union, there is as yet little evidence of significant commitment to
such a policy objective at the member-state level, where policy initiatives are
still designed and implemented. Thus the main thrusts of economic policy
have been on the one hand that of meeting the Maastricht convergence criteria
and, on the other, that of reducing the problem of employment shortage,
with the problem of the unemployed male clearly in mind. It is yet to be
Copyright © 1999. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

determined whether the recent incorporation of equal opportunities as a fourth

pillar of European employment policy will be sufficient to begin to shift the
agenda to one of jobs for both men and women. Women’s employment
prospects over the next decade will still be influenced primarily by the general
trends in the world economy, and the overall policy approach to the
macroeconomic and labour market environment. As such, without further
progress towards mainstreaming, any policy initiatives to reduce gender
inequality may simply be swimming against the tide of economic policy, which
could indeed still threaten the gains that women have made over the past two
decades.

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