Dr Mark Smith was recently in Malta to address a public discussion organised by the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) on the situation of women and employment in Europe and Malta
The increased participation of women in the labour market is one of the key trends to affect all countries over recent years even though the actual level and nature of participation varies between countries.
This rise in female participation has also been accompanied by other major demographic changes and it is now the presence of children rather than marital status that has become the most important determinant of women's participation.
Whereas it was once the case that marriage led to labour market withdrawal, now married women without children tend to display a similar participation pattern to single women without children and for younger cohorts similar patterns to young men. There has been a shift in norms as more married women work, often in part-time jobs, and juggle employment and domestic life; it appears to be feasible to work at more stages of the life cycle. However, despite increases in female employment they still take the main responsibility for activities in the home.
Nevertheless women's experience of employment differs in a number of key ways from that of men and these differences are both an outcome of the gendered nature of labour markets and a source of women's disadvantage in paid employment. These differences can be considered from various aspects: labour market integration, different forms of work, sex segregation of occupations and sectors and pay inequality.
A key measure of women's integration into the labour market is the employment rate and this has been adopted as a measure of labour market performance in the EU in recent years. While there was relatively little variation in male employment rates, from 68.5 per cent to 82.8 per cent, for women the variation was much greater and extended from 72 per cent in Denmark to 40.9 per cent in Greece.
In 2001 Malta had an employment rate just on the lower limit of the EU distribution at 54.7 per cent. How-ever, this reflected a male employment rate that was relatively high (76.6 per cent), and higher than a number of existing members, but a female employment rate that was eight percentage points lower than the current EU lowest. Much of the variation in overall employment rates is a reflection of the different level of integration of women into the formal economy.
Although the presence of children is one of the key factors in shaping the participation of women in the labour market, there are younger cohorts of mothers whose attachment to the labour market is stronger than that of older groups. Nevertheless employment rates for mothers tend to be lower than for non-mothers while the opposite is normally the case for fathers.
In Malta we find a strong impact from the presence of children but we also see a change in employment rates for women of different cohorts with women aged 15-24 and 25-34 having employment rates around twice those of older age groups (49 per cent compared to 25 per cent).
Women and different forms of employment
The growth of atypical work has accompanied the rise of female employment but it is not necessary for a high level of female integration into the labour market. In each country female part-time rates exceed those of men but the EU country with the highest female employment rate, Denmark, has recently experienced declining part-time employment.
In some cases country-specific differences appear more important than the impact of gender. For example, the part-time rate for men in the Netherlands is higher than that for women in five EU member states and Malta.
The female part-time rate in Malta is relatively low by European standards at 17 per cent but in line with other Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Spain and higher than in Greece. Self-employment is also gendered with men having a higher level of involvement than women. This is particularly evident in southern European countries including Malta. However, family work remains a highly feminised employment form which reflects women's weaker position in family businesses.
However, unlike some other Mediterranean countries, Malta has a low proportion of family workers among women and men alike (more in line with northern European member states). The level of involvement in informal work provides another dimension to the gender patterns of employment and may explain part of the low female employment rates in southern European countries, including Malta.
In many cases this has strong links with the family economy and demonstrates the integral links between different dimensions of a societal organisation of employment. However, there may also be limited incentives to enter formal employment if social protection is derived or because of the low social protection associated with available jobs.
Women and men tend to be found in different jobs and different parts of the economy. This segregation of employment can occur by occupation and sector, and both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal segregation is the concentration of one particular gender in certain jobs. These jobs may be rewarded in different ways and at different levels.
Vertical segregation is the concentration of women or men at different parts of the hierarchy within a particular part of the economy. We find that over half the labour force would have to move occupations to eliminate sex segregation - so that men and women were represented within occupations in the same proportions as they appear in the labour market as a whole. Another way to look at segregation is to examine the proportions of female and male employment in different parts of the economy.
Women's employment is much more concentrated in the public sector than men's for all EU countries. Malta also follows this pattern but the levels of concentration are closer to those in Greece and Portugal than those found in northern Europe. The concentration of female part-timers in the public sector also tends to be higher but not in all countries.
Pay inequality
Women's disadvantage compared to men in terms of pay is widespread and these pay gaps have been shown to be resistant to change and the increased number of women in the labour market. Women in full-time work earn between 66 per cent and 84 per cent of the male average hourly wage across the current members of the EU.
This gap holds even in countries where there is a strong culture of equality. For part-timers the gap is less, as male part-timers tend to work alongside female part-timers. However, the levelling down of men's pay in part-time work is not a sound basis for equality and by comparing the hourly pay of female part-timers with male full-timers, the negative impact of working part-time. Female part-timers earn around three-fifths of the hourly earnings for male full-timers.
Factors shaping women's employment
There are several important factors that influence and shape the different patterns of women's employment. These factors are often interrelated and may even mutually reinforce each other but they can also act as agents for changes. These factors include welfare institutions, family, education and training, and the labour market.
The state can play an important role in shaping participation and supporting those in or out of the labour market. In most countries the social contract in the household affords primacy to men in the labour market and women take the main responsibilities for domestic tasks.
This has been described as promoting a male breadwinner norm, for example through taxes, benefits and services. However, in countries like Sweden there is a weak breadwinner norm based around the assumption that all fit adults of working age work or are prepared to work. The employment of women and men with children is facilitated by support for childcare and leave.
Some EU states fall between these two models with contradictory signals from the welfare system (for example, France). The Mediterranean welfare model of the southern European countries can also be regarded as dominated by male breadwinners.
Organisation of the family
The welfare system may both reflect and shape the organisation of the family and different family models and expectations will constrain and shape the labour market behaviour of individuals, particularly women. This can shape what is 'desirable or normal' in the relations and division of work between women and men.
For example, the high expectation of families in an extended family or Mediterranean model can severely restrict the labour supply of women. However, while women in such families may be unable to enter the labour market even on a part-time basis male breadwinners may be unable to take a job that pays anything but a family wage.
Advances in educational attainment account for some but not all of the increases in women's participation. The increased levels of educational attainment among young women is an indication that each new cohort intends to take full advantage of the educational opportunities and make use of these in the labour market.
However, the increased time spent in education can delay entry to the labour market and also helps explain delayed marriages and therefore delayed fertility. Furthermore, higher levels of education have led to higher occupational attainment for some women.
On the one hand, these women may represent a greater loss to firms if they are forced to leave employment because of family responsibilities, while on the other hand, higher educated women will be more reluctant to sacrifice important investment in education and work experience.
In addition women in higher level occupations may be in a better position to afford unsubsidised childcare arrangements but may also suffer from combining long hours of work with care responsibilities.
The organisation of the labour market can also have an important influence on women's employment patterns. In an internal labour market system, where individuals tend to stay with the same employer for much of their working life, any withdrawal from the system or an adjustment to participation could result in significant disadvantage.
The opportunity cost of leaving a secure position can be very high if re-entry jobs are limited or low in the hierarchy. This has been shown to be particularly problematic in some Mediterranean countries. On the other hand, labour markets where there is a higher level of job creation may also create more openings for women returning to the labour market but the creation of marginal part-time jobs may also create barriers of a different kind.
Alternatively, mothers may be constrained by the long hours worked by their spouse if the household is trying to balance work and family life. Limited protection and systems of support for parents may also make dealing with specific care responsibilities difficult, like taking time off to care for a sick child.
Diversity for women in employment
These factors help shape women's experience of employment in different national settings but it is also important to highlight the relative autonomy of the female labour supply. Even where institutions and family structure may act against women's participation in the labour market there have been strong rises in participation from women, particularly among younger cohorts.
Furthermore in all cases it is important to consider the heterogeneity of women's employment experience with differences between groups of women by class, age and education. Across Europe participation rates of higher educated women often show more similarity between countries than with less educated women in their own country. This may lead to divergent trends between and within countries.
For example, on the one hand part-time rates are rising in some parts of the EU alongside increasing numbers of women entering work while on the other hand part-time rates are stabilising and declining among the better educated and in some high employment countries.
Women's increased participation in the labour market may be seen as a challenge to established arrangements around responsibility for labour market and domestic activities.
Increased educational attainment, falling real wages for men and changing family structures act as pressures for change and although these trends vary across countries they all combine to create a level of dynamism in the structures that support and shape women's participation.
Employment policy and gender
As patterns of female employment change, policies must also adapt to reflect labour markets where women play a central role. The importance of female employment is central to the European Employment Strategy and relates both to the objective of raising the overall employment rate and trends in both labour supply and labour demand.
Thus the European Employment Strategy is critically dependent on the further integration of women into the labour market. This can be seen in the target for the EU working age employment rate of 70 per cent by 2010 and of 60 per cent for the female employment rate. Furthermore, member states have also been required to set national targets for the improvement of childcare provision.
The European Employment Strategy has been important in raising the centrality of women's employment in employment policy objectives and led to some new developments at the national level. This is most evident in the use of mainstreaming (the need to take into account the impact on women of all policies).
Commitments to mainstreaming originate at the Fourth UN World conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) to which Malta was also a signatory. However, the introduction of mainstreaming does not necessarily reduce the need for gender specific policies and targets and the commitment to mainstreaming remains a political issue.
A number of positive developments from mainstreaming of employment policy have been identified. These include:
¤ Labour market integration - access to active labour market policies where women have often been at a disadvantage or denied access in the past;
¤ Tax and benefit system - reviews of systems that penalise women through high marginal tax rates or high rates of claw back of state benefits;
¤ Working time and reconciliation - introduction of flexible working or leave arrangements, which may allow individuals to balance work and family;
¤ Segregation - introduction of schemes to reduce segregation in the public employment service and information technology;
¤ Care services - improvements in childcare but demand is still higher.
Women's employment in the EU and Malta
Women have clearly been central to many of the changes that have taken place in the labour market in recent years. The rise of female participation is one of the most common labour market trends across countries.
Although the female employment rate is relatively low in Malta this trend is also apparent. As variations in female employment rates also explain much of the variation in overall employment rates, women's employment must be a central plank of policy aimed at raising the proportion of the working age population in work. This is the case for Malta as much as for the rest of Europe.
The relative position of women in the labour market differs along a number of key dimensions when compared to men but there is no single European model of female participation and country-specific factors can override gender in many instances.
This is best illustrated by those member states that have higher levels of female employment than for men in other member states. Similarly patterns of segregation and involvement in atypical work also vary. However, across all countries it is clear that women are clearly disadvantaged when it comes to equal pay. These different patterns and trajectories for women are shaped by and reflect the different institutional arrangements within each country.
This means that there is no European model of household and labour market organisation for a country such as Malta to adopt but participation in each country is influenced by country-specific circumstances. These institutions of state, welfare, family, education and the labour market reinforce these diverse patterns for women.
However, diversity also exists within countries. For example, younger women in Malta have a higher participation rate than their older counterparts and this may be an early sign of a challenge to the male breadwinner organisation of family and labour market work.
The developments in the European Employment Policy are closely tied to the changes in the labour market associated with rising female participation. Since the late 1990s the European Employment Policy has explicitly recognised the importance of women. This is also evident in the developments in Malta and the initiatives of the Employment and Training Corporation.
There are a number of reasons for the increased importance of gender in Maltese and European policy. Firstly, women have played and are playing a central role in the restructuring of the economy and labour markets. Secondly, employment policy without an equal opportunities perspective may exacerbate gender divisions in the labour market and women's rights in the area of employment have equal status with those of men.
Thirdly, employment policy needs to focus on longer-term structural changes in the labour market and social organisation and the changing role of women in the economy is central to these changes. Fourthly, state policies cannot turn back the clock on the labour market integration of women; however, they can shape the degree of social and economic inequality for women and men.
Gender mainstreaming introduced in some aspects of Maltese and European employment policy provides an opportunity to promote gender equality through the formulation and implementation of employment policies with a gender perspective.
Equal opportunity policies may involve changes for men as well as for women but without mainstreaming men may take little interest in the issues and focus solely on the costs of equal opportunity and not on the benefits to society.
However, it is also important to note that mainstreaming may also have inherent dangers if equal opportunities bodies are marginalised and gender equality issues are given a low priority even when they have been identified.
Nevertheless, mainstreaming of gender issues in employment policy offers the chance for equal opportunities to be seen as more than an issue for women and allows policy to reflect the fundamental changes that have taken place in female and male employment patterns.
In Malta's case, policy developments and changes in employment may offer a unique opportunity for women of a younger generation to maintain their foothold on the labour market with the protection of equality legislation and from policies that have been subject to gender mainstreaming.
There is a potential synergy in this relationship given the greater attachment to the labour market of younger women and their participation in education. For this to occur, the cohorts of younger women need to be given the opportunity to remain in the labour market.
Although women must have the choice, women who do choose to work should not face disadvantage in the labour market or have barriers to participation placed in their way. However, until the division of labour within the home is also challenged, women will continue to take the main responsibility for children and care.
As long as this persists, women who do work will face a double burden to balance work and family life and men will continue to miss out on time with their families and the important role of caring.
This article draws heavily on the work of the European Commission's Expert Group on Gender and Employment, which is co-ordinated from the European Work and Employment Research Centre at UMIST.
Dr Smith is a member of this group's co-ordinating team, alongside Dr Damian Grimshaw, Dr Colette Fagan and Mr Hugo Figueiredo, under the leadership of Professor Jill Rubery. The group also comprises 14 national experts.
Further details and publications are available at www.umist.ac.uk/management/ewerc/egge.