Gender segregation in the labour market : root causes, implications and policy responses in the EU

Abstract

The aim of this report is to analyse employment segregation for women and men in the European labour market \nat both the sectoral and occupational levels. It provides a \ncomparative analysis of trends in segregation across the \n27 EU Member States, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, \nand examines the root causes of the phenomenon, the consequences, and current and desirable policy responses. \nGender-based employment segregation is so pervasive \nthat distinctions have multiplied in order to facilitate \nanalysis: occupational versus sectoral segregation, overall or horizontal versus vertical segregation, vertical versus hierarchical segregation. Horizontal segregation is \nunderstood as under- (over-) representation of a given \ngroup in occupations or sectors, not ordered by any criterion, and is often referred to as segregation tout court. \nVertical segregation denotes the under- (over-) representation of the group in occupations or sectors at the top \nof an ordering based on ‘desirable’ attributes — income, \nprestige, job stability, etc. Finally, hierarchical segregation stands for under- (over-) representation of the group \nat the top of occupation-specific ladders. All forms of \ngender-based segregation are considered in this report, \nalthough overall and vertical segregation in occupations \nreceive closest attention. \nThe first part of the report examines levels and change \nin overall segregation in European countries (Chapter 1). \nIt goes on to review the most important factors that impinge on segregation (Chapter 2) and to assess three \nmain implications, namely undervaluation of women’s \nwork, confinement in ‘low quality’ jobs, and skill shortages (Chapter 3). Policies are reviewed and assessed in \nChapter 4. The second part of the report summarises \nthe highlights from case-study research conducted at \nnational level on 10 occupational groups, the evidence \nfrom this research being used as a reference throughout \nthe report.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 257 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.