Closing the gap; employment and unemployment of women in southern Europe

Studies and researches carried out in Europe since the beginning of the crisis point out that, at a first stage (^{Torns, 2011}; ^{Ferreira, 2013}; ^{Bettio, Corsi et al., 2013}; ^{Karamessini and Rubery, 2013}; ^{Pavolini, 2014}; ^{Castaño, 2015}), the crisis affected men more (2008 second quarter) and which later when the austerity measures imposed by the Troika began to be applied, women became more affected, due to cuts in the public sector.

Feminine employment rate.¹² has maintained since the beginning and the distance between masculine and feminine employment has shortened (^{Alcañiz and Guerreiro, 2009}; ^{Ferreira, 2010}; ^{Leon, 2013}; ^{Alcañiz, 2015}), nowadays it is 8.5 percentage points in Spain, 17.9 in Italy and 6.2 in Portugal. ^{Bettio and Verashchagina (2014)} consider that the leveling down comes from the worsening of masculine participation rather than from the improvement women’s labor results.

Women, being more sensitive to economic cycles than men, enter the labor market out of their families’ economic need, as it is the case if the partner is unemployed (^{Gálvez et al., 2013}). Nowadays, there are more married women who have a job than young women due to the difficulties youths have to find a job before 24 years of age. In this respect, there has been a change in relation to previous crises, when women went back home to leave their posts for men (^{Gálvez-Muñoz et al., 2013}).

Graph 1 .¹³ shows the evolution of the feminine employment rate in the three countries. We notice that masculine employment maintains homogeneity between the three, while in the feminine employment profile there are differences; Portugal is the country with the largest feminine presence in the labor market. .¹⁴

The crises have had disastrous consequences in relation to unemployment, with noticeable differences between the three countries (^{Ingellis and Calvo, 2015}; ^{Ferreira, 2013}). The most notorious is the tripe increment in the unemployment rate for Spanish men and double for Spanish women. Italian and Portuguese men and women have increased their unemployment rate, but not in the same proportion as in Spain (see graph 2). .¹⁵

Unemployment aggravates for people who have been in this situation for more than 12 months; these are called long-lasting unemployed (LLU). In Europe, as a whole, LLU have a relevant weight in total unemployment. In fact, almost a half (between 40 and 45%) of total unemployment corresponds to LLU (^{De la Rica and Brindusa, 2014}). In relation to these three countries, the evolution of the crisis up to 2015 is shown in table 1.

This increase in LLU is due to the economic recession and economic structural reasons (^{De la Rica and Brindusa, 2014}): from the labor offer, mismatch between the abilities or skills demanded and those offered; from the demand, reduction of demand owing to an interest to cut down on wages; from labor and State fiscal policies, high contributions to social security, high protection of employment and generous unemployment long-lasting subsidies that discourage looking for a job in the current crisis contexts.

Continuity in segregation; sectors and occupations

From the configuration of labor society, the participating social agents established a differentiation —segregation— between posts destined for women and men (^{Scott, 1995}), establishing a gender division that persists at present. Segregation is the materialization of the sexual division of labor in the labor market, which establishes inequality in wages, hierarchy and labor conditions (^{Ibáñez, 2008}). Its causes are cultural, on the one side, in short because of gender roles; and on the other, the configuration of the labor market that establishes a classification of posts with “gendered assignation”, hindering the inclusion of women.

Segregation generates inequalities in four aspects (^{Burchell et al., 2014}): 1) it reduces employment options and reinforces gender stereotypes; 2) it produces both vertical segregation (men’s tendency to take better jobs) and horizontal segregation (women and men choose different types of jobs); 3) it can be the result of choosing jobs that allow conciliate labor with family life; 4) it facilitates the undervaluing of jobs largely taken by women.

Moreover, a segmented labor market restricts women’s opportunities to change the sexual division of labor at home, because they have a more restricted access to qualified paid jobs than men.

The analyses carried out for the European Union (^{Smith et al., 2013}) refer to marked labor segregation by gender, due to the permanence of gender stereotypes about the posts and the women’s election to work on schedules that allow conciliating labor and family life, thus reinforcing segregation. Graphs 3 and 4 show changes in female labor participation by sectors.

Commerce is the sector where the most women participate in Spain and Italy, and it is the second in importance in Portugal. Education, health care and social services are feminized sectors as well; for its part, manufacturing industry has presence at the three countries, but at different positions: Portugal in the first place; Italy, second; and Spain, fourth place (see graph 4).

The changes observed in female labor participation by sectors over these crisis years point at the disappearance of manufacturing employment from the ranking of the four sectors in Spain, remaining in Italy and Portugal, but at a reduced proportion. Commerce, Helath care and education are the three priority sectors in feminine employment, and in Spain, catering is among the first four.

As a conclusion about where women are employed, data reflect a noticeable increase over the studied years and for the three countries in public administration, education and health care. There is a slight increase in transport and storage and in professional activities, and continuity in the rest of the sectors.

In order to find out the segregation index of various occupations, a classification was produced.¹⁶ based on the analysis of men and women’s occupation, considering an occupation aggregated if in it there is more than 60 percent of men or women. Results show masculinized, feminized.¹⁷ and mixed occupations. Table 2 presents the distribution of employed population by sex and classification type.

Spain and Portugal have a heavier segregation than Italy, because of the larger number of women working in feminized sectors and fewer in mixed or masculinized sectors; while in Italy, feminine occupation has a higher proportion in mixed jobs. By and large, for the three countries, women’s access to masculine occupations is lower than men’s access to feminized jobs.

A feminized labor figure: part-time work

Part-time work makes labor reorganization, flexibility and precariousness for women evident, stressing the gendered segmentation.¹⁸ that appears in this crisis context (^{Torns and Carrasquer, 2007}; ^{Monteiro, 2010}; ^{Ortiz, 2014}; ^{Pace, 2014}). From 2008 to 2015, part-time employment rate increased in Spain and Italy, but not in Portugal, a country where this sort of working hours is less visible due to low wages. .¹⁹

Part-time work exhibits the uneven segregation that exists nowadays in the labor market from gender reasons. Its growth refers to the possibility of allowing the conciliation of labor and family life and the creation of job posts with this flexible profile. In both cases, women are the most affected, because of their caretaker role and the consideration of these working hours, the worst payment, with no possibilities of promotion and lower future pension, related to groups not considered in the breadwinner model, clearly displaying the survival of patriarchate in society (^{Casaca, 2012}; ^{Alcañiz, 2015}).

If we cross the classification by masculinized, feminized or mixed sectors with the type of working day, we obtain the results shown in table 3.

Women employ in part-time work largely in feminized sectors. Then, there is double inequality, in segregation and segmentation, since together with poor valuing and subsequent lower wages of employment in feminized sectors, the fact of being part-time adds, with which precariousness and inequality become acuter in the case of working women in feminized sectors in part-time work in Spain and Portugal.

Permanent instability: temporary employment

A temporary contract meets the demands of entrepreneurial flexibility according to production needs, making room for another labor segmentation in which women also lose (^{Juan, 2015}). Temporary work has degraded labor conditions and has served, together with mass unemployment, to discipline labor force in its salary demands and in the defense of its individual and collective labor rights (^{Alonso and Fernández, 2013}; ^{Lorente, 2014}).

Differences are noticeable between southern European countries because of the different regulations and structure of labor and economic markets. ²⁰Even if Spain has reduced its proportion, it is still the country with the highest rate in temporary jobs. In ^{Otaegui’s (2014)} opinion, the drop of temporality is caused by the crisis, which swept temporary jobs —the first affectation—, this way, surely temporary workers became unemployed, the ultimate expression of precariousness (^{Larrañaga, 2014}).

In Portugal, it is verified that with the crisis there was an increase in temporality for men and a drop for women; this reflects the phenomenon which Virginia ^{Ferreira (2013)} calls “feminization” of the men’s labor conditions, now subject to forms of precariousness previously largely for women. This fact has also occurred in Italy, where feminine temporality, in spite of being lower than the masculine, has remained constant, while that of men has increased.

^{Ingellis and Calvo (2015)} state that in Italy labor market is more rigid, so temporality is lower; this way, there is a duality between male and female workers in relation to social protection, as in Italy it is lower than in Spain.

Make your own job post: self-employment

In the European Union and according to recent data (^{Hatfield, 2015}), 14% of European workers are self-employed. The sectors in which they work range from agriculture, freelance professionals and cleaning staff. The European country with most self-employment is Greece, however Spain and Italy also present high proportions.

It is considered a precarious labor figure as it is a fast way to enter the labor market, but labor conditions are worse since there is neither unemployment coverage nor social security, wages are low (up to 40% lower) and jobs are unstable. ^{Hatfield (2015)} alludes to their greater satisfaction than other salaried workers as they are their own bosses and organize their working day themselves; however, insecurity and instability make them search for a job that covers these demands.

There is more masculine self-employment than feminine; nevertheless, la latter is on the rise with the crisis and especially in less skilled employment where labor conditions are bad but allow conciliation. In ^{Hakim’s (2005)} opinion, it is another manifestation that women look for a job that enables them to perform their roles of caretakers in a satisfactory manner.

The European Union and governments are setting initiatives into motion to incentivize self-employment in the shape of help for entrepreneurs: facilitating low-interests loans to create autonomous enterprises. In like manner, the European Social Fund facilitates nonrefundable subventions to support new initiatives. Graphs 5 and 6 show the changes in feminine precariousness between 2008 and 2015. .²¹

Pending objective: decrease wage gap

As a consequence of segmentation and segregation, there appears another inequality between men and women: the one related to wages. Even if the objective has been present in the European Union since its inception, .²² truth is such objective is still the Achilles’ heel regarding equality in the European Union, for no country has attained it. This made the European Commission establish the European Equal Pay Day, an event organized to sensitize people on this fact.

This day varies depending on the wage gap between men and women; the first day it was observed was on March 5^th, 2011.²³ According to the ^{European Commission (2014)}, in 2011 wage gap was 16%, slightly descending in relation to 2008, when it was 17.3%. As for Spain, it was slightly superior, 17.8%, while in Italy it was surprisingly lower, 6.7%. Both countries have increased their wage gap over recent years: this way, in 2013, according to the latest data from ^{Eurostat (2015)}, the gap increased to 19.3% in Spain, to 13% in Portugal, and in Italy 7.3%.

Inequality between men and women in wage gap is superior in Spain, this makes it evident the greater feminine labor precariousness related, for its part, to the other aforementioned precariousness factors.

The reasons for wage differentiation between men and women are fundamentally these (^{European commission Report, 2014}): in the first place, women and men are in the labor market in different occupations and sectors; post held by women are usually poorly paid.

Secondly, women frequently have the part-time jobs that are paid the least. Thirdly, the cultural aspect of gender roles, in which women are largely responsible for house chores and caretaking, a fact that limits their greater involvement in the job and possible promotion. In the fourth place, the underrating of posts held by women produces lower retributions in the wage system. Finally, the stereotype of the woman’s wage as a second income, not the main one; public imagination still assigns men he role of breadwinner, as it was initially institutionalized.

Persistent inequality: gender roles’ performance

As previously stated, the crisis affected women and men in different ways. On the one side, it has made women incorporate into labor market, reducing the gap in the presence of men and women in the labor market; and on the other side, it has increased their precariousness by means of labor flexibility and segregation and their role of caretakers (^{Carrasco et al., 2011}).

If we add the cutbacks the States have made to their social expenditure, the situation becomes complicated for women, and in words by ^{Gálvez et al. (2013)}, a feminine austericide is committed, and it especially affects women with the least resources.

Time uses as inequality axes

The study of uses of time as a measurement in the sociological analysis of gender has turned into a basic tool that makes inequalities between men and women evident (^{De la Fuente, 2007}; ^{Durán and Rogero, 2009}; ^{Martin Criado and Prieto, 2015}; ^{García Sainz, 2015}). Even if time is the same for everyone, its use differs in function of social variables, among which gender is one of the most important; hence, the interest in measuring the temporary distribution of the activities carried out along the day and also interpreting them from a gender perspective.

Data obtained by means of the surveys carried out have also been criticized (^{Carrasco et al., 2011}), because of the consideration that caretaking jobs are much more complex to measure than the rest of tasks performed along the day, as it cannot be done solely by counting hours and minutes (see table 5).

Spanish women devote more time to employment than Italian women, thereby less caretaking tasks. As for men, distribution is similar, and for both sexes, free time is superior in Spain than in Italy.

The asymmetrical involvement of men and women to house chores and caretaking lead to the so called “caretaking gap” and demonstrates women’s continuity in the performance of house chores and caretaking.²⁴(^{Orloff, 2009}; ^{Tobío, 2005}; ^{Sarraceno, 2004}; ^{Pandolfini, 2014}; ^{Alcañiz, 2015}).

Leaves, permits and resignations due to caretaking

As previously stated, the interests of the European Union.²⁵in incorporating women into the remunerated labor market favored the approval of various regulations encompassed in the concept of conciliation of labor and personal life, so that people with little children or dependents have a series of measures related to temporary leaves, flexibility or reduction of working hours, without implying giving up the job. Among these measures distinguishable are caretaking leave, reduction of working hours, nursing leave and labor flexibility.

Regarding the interruptions in labor life or reduction of working hours, data show that fundamentally “it is a women’s thing”; this is to say, despite the conciliation laws approved in Italy, Spain and Portugal addressed both sexes, they were “neutral”, the decision of altering labor trajectory is still something feminine (^{Alcañiz, 2012}). It is important to point out that Portugal is the country of southern Europe in which the presence of children under 8 years determines the abandonment of the job, due to the low wages (see table 6).

The continuity in the performance of domestic and caretaking roles is verified with these data, and then reaffirms when it is corroborated that the reduction in women’s working hours increases according to the number of children under 6 years of age they have. This way, in 2013, 34.1% of the Italian women with one child works part-time, while those with three children account for 42.6%.

This dissimilarity is even more stressed in the European Union, where the percentage difference between women with one child and those with three or more in relation to part-time is almost 14 points. This variation does not take place in Spain, where part-time percentages do not vary according to the number of children, (29.5% in 2004 and 30.1% in 2013) (^{Eurostat, 2015}).

Caretaking as labor “inactivity”

The inactive population in a society comprises people who are not in the remunerated labor market, either because they are studying, were previously employed and now are pensioned, or because they are physically or psychologically challenged. It also includes women exclusively devoted to domestic chores and caretaking, a much discussed topic deemed as “labor” by feminists, and claimed to be included in the country’s GDP, which most surely would increase because of the important number of women devoted to house chores in southern Europe countries.

In the three analyzed countries the proportion of inactive women has decreased between 2008 and 2015: in Spain the decrease has been 5 percentage points, two in Italy, and 1.3 in Portugal. This is to say, the traditional figure of a woman devoted to family care as a fundamental task.²⁶ is changing; it is making room for another model of women incorporated into the labor market, however —and this is the most important (and uneven)— also devoted to house chores and caretaking.

Albeit, this last is still the main explanatory factor to why many women, even intending to enter the labor market, do not look for a job and give priority to such task instead of having a remunerated job outside the household (see graph 7).