Solving Gender Discrimination in the Labour Market in EU - Essay Example

?The Challenge of Addressing Gender Discrimination in the European Labour Market Introduction Numerous of the policy recommendations and formations of the European Union (EU) have been currently aimed at solving gender discrimination in the labour market. As a result, there has been an increase in the number of flexible employment all over the EU for men and women (Colgan & Ledwith 2002). As stated in the Report on Equality between Women and Men (2010) by the European Commission: The increasing participation of women in the labour market is a positive development, representing an important contribution to economic growth in the EU, accounting for a quarter of annual economic growth since 1995 (p. 8). . This essay discusses how the European Union addressed gender discrimination in the labour market. The discussion is focused on policy, but is substantiated by a wide-ranging literature on existing employment patterns. Within a policy framework, gender equality in the labour market is indicated as providing a solution to three major dilemmas, namely, (1) unemployment, (2) work-life balance, and (3) competitiveness (Ellina 2003). Up till now, competitiveness has been the major issue, creating both the motivations and the prospects for employers to reorganise employment affairs through enhanced flexibility. Flexibility is considered as providing the most worker-friendly set of privileges intended at balancing family and work life (Colgan & Ledwith 2002). Unemployment has progressively attained major importance in European governments’ policy formation and development, and new kinds of work sharing or reduction of work time are also gradually considered as representing a kind of worker-oriented flexibility able to address the issue of gender discrimination in the labour market (Barr 2005). Gender, among these three approaches, is an apparent issue primarily for flexibility. Taking into consideration the attempt of the European Commission’s Network of Experts on the Situation of Women (Schmid, O’Reilly & Schomann 1996) in the Labour Market, this essay argues that, in reality, all approaches revolved around the prevalence and usually the strengthening of gender discrimination or differentiation in the labour market. Nevertheless, the strengthening of these differentiations is neither important nor unavoidable in successfully resolving the issues of imbalance between work and family, unemployment, and competitiveness. Addressing Gender Discrimination in the European Labour Market The kind and level of flexible employment rests on gender relations structure and the broader societal system, such as particularly the regulation structure of the labour market but the pattern of social group and family life as well (De Grip, Hoevenberg & Willems 1997). Women have a tendency to be unevenly represented in the labour market, especially in flexible work arrangement, and this enhanced participation in flexible employment is rooted in the idea that women are not essentially totally responsible for their survival and that women must assume major responsibility for domestic affairs (Puidak 1995). Therefore, women are thought to be more capable than men of exploring the formal economy in a succession of informal or short-term employments, accepting seasonal and casual jobs, and working in the home. Women can also perform the role of voluntary partners in family businesses (Rubery, Smith, & Fagan 1999). They are modestly connected with the traditional full-time work arrangement around which social norms and regulation of the labour market have emerged. Women, in reality, are less capable than men of taking out remuneration when their job falls below the established full-time agreement, or, certainly, when they are obliged to labour further than their part-time hours or even further than the established full-time hours (Rossilli 2000). Hence, female employment is inclined to be more related with atypical employment than male employment (De Grip et al. 1997). Nevertheless, if the flexibility provided by men is compared to that provided by women, we discover that it is not quite true that one form of labour provides greater flexibility than the other, but that the form of the provided flexibility varies, as does the compensation given for flexibility (Rossilli 2000). Employers usually identify a necessity in the case of men to offer full-time and regular involvement in the labour market but, simultaneously, employers gain from the assumption that the participation of males in the labour market is prioritised over any domestic responsibilities (Elman 1996). Hence, men are frequently viewed to be more open to ‘long working hours, for irregular additional hours working—including extra hours at short notice—for unsocial hours working including weekends and night shifts, for annualised hours systems where time off fits with company and not household needs, and for work that takes them away from home for both short and extended periods’ (Rossilli 2000, 125). The idea of a family income has sheltered men from flexible employment, whilst at the same time making women vulnerable to higher inconsistency or unevenness in work time and compensation; and the inferior status of women in trade unions and in the labour market has made them more vulnerable to flexibility without returns (Rossilli 2000). Simple gender segregation in the contemporary employment relations can hence be described: women, for employers, offer a form of labour for intermittent, casual, inconsistent, or short employment; whilst men provide a form of labour for full-time work arrangement, obviously rooted in higher compensation levels (Barr 2005). These disparities in gender relations to work hours and flexibility do not, nonetheless, seem to establish gender differentiation of labour. Thus far, there is modest substantiation to indicate that employers organise the labour force’s gender composition in accordance to working-time necessities (Rubery et al. 1999). Hence, men may be hired in positions where there are, theoretically, a large number of opportunities for informal or short time employment, but where full-time job is in reality frequently made available, while women may be hired in positions where there are extensive conditions for unsocial working time (Barr 2005) which might be seen to clash with domestic responsibilities. Hence, one major restraint on the expansion of new flexible work arrangements may be the traditional gender division of labour. Certainly, even when the jobs occupied by men might be more simply broke up into short-term or part-time employments, full-time jobs generally are still available, or, in several instances, jobs may be structured on a self-employed way for men to have the chance for full-time jobs through working for various organisations (Colgan & Ledwith 2002). For instance, in the Netherlands joint contracts prohibit the use of short-term agreements in construction (Rossilli 2002). Nevertheless, participation in non-traditional or flexible types of employment depends not merely on gender but on the larger societal system as well. These gender divisions are restrained by systems of labour market regulation, such as official restrictions on shift work, overtime, and compensation conditions for overtime work. Nor are there essentially firm bases for believing that there will be a collective union toward greatly flexible labour markets (Barr 2005). Indication of sustained diversity all over the European Union reveals the significance of societal systems in restraining the level of deregulated and flexible work contracts, and in mitigating its effect on employment discrimination and outcomes (European Commission 2010). Hence, the scope of flexible employment and its outcomes for workers within the formal economy will depend upon the regulation system of the labour market. Differences in the involvement patterns of women between European countries also generate distinct arrays of opportunities for flexible jobs. Flexible work arrangements may be mostly available in the informal or formal economy, in accordance to whether majority of women are outside or inside the formal economy (Ellina 2003). Novel technologies, like online jobs, may obscure these divisions and generate prospects for new work arrangements in all economies. The EU Solution: Flexible Employment There are various forms of employer approaches which are resulting in new types of flexibility and to possible reinforcement of gender segregations. These involve changes to work relations and cost minimisation techniques, as well as the division of working hours and opening/operating time (De Grip et al. 1997). The differentiation of the operating or opening time of a company from its work hours is a development that can be found in several European countries. This development is linked to the expansion of opening/operating time due to heightened competition, advances in relations of and systems of production, and growth in regulations and consumption trends (Barr 2005). The outcome is a growing number of companies where opening/operating time is more extended than the traditional working week (Rossilli 2000). Companies are compelled to take into account alternatives for working-time arrangements, a condition that enlarges diversity level in working-time arrangements. The alternatives for taking in extended operating time involve (Rossilli 2000): ‘overtime by fulltimers on shift work or rotating daily schedules; annualised hours schedules of full-times; regular schedules of part-time workers; and part-timers specifically employed for unsocial hours’ (p. 145). When differentiation results in flexible arrangements for the full-time hours of men opportunities are expected to be diminished for a new gender arrangement for domestic duties. Although overall time is decreased as an outcome of scheduling of annualised time, leisure time is essentially uneven and, hence, less simple to reconcile with domestic duties and functions (Ellina 2003). These difficulties are heightened as more systems of annualised time are applied, not to reduce annual working time, but to progress into an arrangement where definite separations between personal/leisure time and work time are absent, and where there are swelling demands to provide unpaid overtime, within the practice of flexibility linked with the current opening/operating time schedules (Barr 2005). In case part-time employment is exercised to take in unsocial and uneven hours, there are many distinct circumstances with distinct repercussions for gender divisions (Puidak 1995). The result will rely on whether part-time employees are obliged to be flexible anytime, or whether there are assigned positions for each employee. Although differentiation in factories capably influences women as workers, the subject of opening time of offices and commercial establishments also influences them as customers/consumers (Rubery et al. 1999). Extended weekend working or unsocial hours are hence at times advocated, at times opposed, in support of women, relying on whether their welfare as employees or as consumers takes precedence (Rossilli 2000). The first policy concern that emerges in relation with deregulation and differentiation of working hours is the degree to which they should be approached to curtail the disadvantages for women as employees while capitalising on their advantages as consumers (Ellina 2003). For instance, a related issue surfaces in the public schools and services. One apparent and possibly less expensive policy alternative is to cultivate, even require where needed, effectual management of time programmes nationally (Rossilli 2000). The subsequent passage from a statute in Italy claiming to enhance time management of work and family demonstrates the issue (Rossilli 2000): We (the proposers of the law) asked ourselves who decides hours of service and working hours. And we found out that there is no co-ordination at all: the provveditore (Chief Education Officer) decides about school schedules; the prefetto (the Prefect) decides about hours of opening of shops; banks decide on their own; the public administration decides about the opening of postal services; hospital managers decide about hours of hospital opening; public transport companies, including the metropolitan company, schedule services on their own; and so on (p. 146). This is a potential opportunity for intervention for the EU where in a small amount of resources could generate considerable improvements in the lives of women. The second policy concern is whether everyone should provide labour in unsocial hours, up to the point that they are unavoidable or favourable, hence distributing the distraction lightly, or whether the unwelcoming hours should be given to a minority (Rossilli 2000). The claims supporting the latter approach involve the reality that there are people who surely want this kind of work, for instance, students, crooks, and women with children who look for employment when their spouses can look after the children. Nevertheless, in opposition to these claims should be establish the possibility that those that are underprivileged in the labour market could be obliged into this form of employment as well due to lack of option (Colgan & Ledwith 2002). For instance, mothers may be obliged to agree to quite unwelcoming and erratic hours due to unfavourable childcare set ups. Disproportionate assignment of unsocial hours is capable of reinforcing discrimination in the labour market, which unfavourable outcome should be thwarted because, where employment arrangements become divided, women are prone to become part of the bottom ladder. A quite common feature of gender division is generally found in European Union’s member countries (Rossilli 2000): There are more women than men among family workers and employees, the converse being true for the self-employed; women predominate among workers on short-hours schedules, while long-hour schedules tend to be male preserves; in particular, the share of women in part-time jobs is from three to fifteen times as high for women as for men, and because of greater involvement in part-time work women are more likely to face irregular and unpredictable working hours; women are more likely than men to work regularly on Saturdays, while men are more likely than women to work occasionally on Sundays; the share of women in temporary employment is usually higher than for men, partly because temporary work prevails among the young, where women’s employment is concentrated (p. 155). Even though forms of flexible employment generate the traditional gender discrimination, there is no compelling proof that they establish, or are established by, the earlier gender division of labour (Barr 2005). In short, there is no basic link between flexible work arrangements and job typing patterns. Conclusions To date, the European Union has pursued flexibility mainly from the employers’ side. Furthermore, flexibility has been given quite a number of trials. On the one hand, flexibility is recommended as a solution for unemployment. Nevertheless, different kinds of flexibility are masked varieties of work sharing, which are recommended or enforced in reaction to growing unemployment, such as longer and financed leave periods. The facts substantiating considerable employment outcomes of such approach is unsound, whilst there are evident indications that they give discouragement to women’s involvement, or increase the possibility of poverty. Flexibility, on the other hand, is granted the function of improving balance between work and family and to function as an alternative to weakening public services. Ultimately, flexibility is regarded an essential requirement of competition. However, while male employees are being stripped off of extra remuneration that atypical schedules customarily provided, for instance, women are gradually given irregular unpaid flexibility. Therefore, in light of the above discussion, the European Union has been successful thus far in promoting gender equality in the labour market through emphasis in social solidarity, competitiveness, development, and employment. References Barr, N. (2005) Labour Markets and Social Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Accession and beyond. Washington, DC: World Bank. Colgan, F. & Ledwith, S. (2002) Gender, Diversity, and Trade Unions: International Perspectives. London: Routledge. De Grip, A., Hoevenberg, J. & Willems, E. (1997) ‘Atypical Employment in the European Union,’ International Labour Review, 136(1), 49+ Ellina, C. (2003) Promoting Women’s Rights: The Politics of Gender in the European Union. New York: Routledge. Elman, R.A. (1996) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books. European Commission (2010) Report on Equality between Women and Men. Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union. Puidak, P. (1995) ‘European Union Striving for Gender Equality,’ Social Security Bulletin, 58(2), 78+ Rossilli, M. (2000) Gender Policies in the European Union. University of Michigan: P. Lang. Rubery, J., Smith, M. & Fagan, C. (1999) Women’s Employment in Europe: Trends and Prospects. London: Routledge. Schmid, G., O’Reilly, J. & Schomann, K. (1996) International Handbook of Labour Market Policy and Evaluation. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Read More