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Gender Inequality in the Labour Market and the Great Recession

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Inequality

Part of the book series: International Papers in Political Economy ((IPPE))

Abstract

The study of labour market gender inequalities has been and still is an issue of major relevance. Although gender equality has become a goal in political agendas worldwide, there is empirical evidence showing the persistence of gender differences. The gender employment and unemployment gaps and the ‘gender pay gap’ support this persistence. Additionally, during the last decade, the Great Recession has exerted a detrimental impact on labour market outcomes not only in the European Union in general but also in some specific countries in particular. In this contribution, we shed light on the evolution of this labour market dimension of gender inequalities during the Great Recession, both in the EU in general and in a set of selected countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The United Nations (UN) specifically defines, “Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”.

  2. 2.

    See Agénor and Canuto (2015) for an assessment on the long-run positive impact of gender equality on Brazil ’s economic growth and Elborgh-Woytek et al. (2013) for its overall impact.

  3. 3.

    In the study by Blau and Kahn (2017), it is demonstrated that while gender differences in experience accounted for 24% of the gender gap in the 1980s, it only counted for 16% by 2010.

  4. 4.

    Notice that less work training eventually implies a reduction of females’ relative human capital.

  5. 5.

    Since 1970 a total amount of 13 pieces of legislation to ensure equal treatment at work have been adopted. In 2000, the new EU legislation laws on equal rights between genders were adopted to prohibit gender discrimination because of racial and ethnic origin, religion and belief, disability, sexual orientation or age (EC 2018)

  6. 6.

    “More compressed male wage structures and lower female net supply are associated with a lower ‘gender pay gap ’” (Blau and Kahn 2001, p. 138).

  7. 7.

    In the pair-wise comparison between the US and other advance economies, performed by Blau and Kahn (1992, 1995, 1996b), it is found that the higher wage inequality existing in the US is the main reason for the ‘gender pay gap ’ to be relatively higher. This may be called “the paradox of American women with relatively higher qualifications” (Blau and Kahn 2001).

  8. 8.

    Using microdata for 22 countries, Blau and Kahn (2001) find strong evidence of the importance of institutional setting to explain the existence of the ‘gender pay gap ’.

  9. 9.

    These are: (i) collective bargaining coverage; (ii) minimum wage laws; (iii) unemployment insurance systems; (iv) job protection; and (v) parental leave entitlements (Blau and Kahn 2001).

  10. 10.

    By ‘great recession ’, we refer to the years 2008–2013.

  11. 11.

    We start at the beginning of the twenty-first century and finish the last year for which data are available (2016).

  12. 12.

    See Sect. 2.1 for a review of the literature.

  13. 13.

    The difference between sex and gender is an issue under debate. However, now, there is arrangement on using the differences in sexes to split statistical data and, as a consequence in the present paper we follow this general agreement. We perform the analysis using data for men and women although we use the term ‘gender’ as a synonym of ‘sex’ throughout this chapter. Similarly, we use indistinctly the term women and female as well as men and male.

  14. 14.

    We have established these three periods according to the evolution of GDP in the euro area. In the years 2009–2014 the GDP at constant prices was below the GDP in 2008. We consider that the financial crisis ended the year when the GDP shows values similar to those prior to the crisis.

  15. 15.

    The rate of employment is defined as the number of people with a job contract divided by the number of people at the age of work. It is convenient to specify that there is not a common agreement for all the countries in the EU to define this rate. As an example, in Spain, it is considered that the age for a person to legally be able to work is 16, being working age population between 16 and 64 years old (both included). In the case of the EU, working age adults comprises the individuals between 15 and 64 years old (both included). Accordingly, we use the individuals of this range of age in our study, as provided by The Eurostat, defining the rate of employment as the number of people with a job contract in a certain area divided by the number of people who, in that area, are 15 or more years old and younger than 65.

  16. 16.

    The unemployment rate in Spain has historically shown high records. The long-term average, an indicator that we could identify with the equilibrium rate of unemployment has been around 14% since the mid-1980s. The value then of the unemployment rate in 2016 would have to be compared with this equilibrium value and not so much with the unemployment rate before the crisis. In the medium term the recovery of the unemployment rate before the crisis would be very difficult to estimate.

  17. 17.

    This is the method followed by the European Commission to compute the ‘gender pay gap ’ (GPG).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

    Patricia Peinado & Felipe Serrano

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  1. Patricia Peinado
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  2. Felipe Serrano
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Correspondence to Patricia Peinado .

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  1. Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Philip Arestis

  2. University of Leeds , Leeds, UK

    Malcolm Sawyer

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Peinado, P., Serrano, F. (2018). Gender Inequality in the Labour Market and the Great Recession. In: Arestis, P., Sawyer, M. (eds) Inequality. International Papers in Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91298-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91298-1_6

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