We investigate how women’s attitude and realization of choices towards equal participation in the labor market changes with age, and how these patterns differ between generations in transition and Western economies. As transition countries experienced a drop in employment rates regardless of gender, we study the relative change in the position of women, compared to similarly endowed men. We find that disentangling age, time, and cohort effects is necessary to appropriately assess women’s progress on labor markets in transition. The results indicate that in Western Europe countries women born later have much more equal position on the labor market as compared to older birth cohorts, but this is not the case in transition economies.

1. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize,
and experience in the labor market?
(with Magdalena Smyk and Lucas van der Velde)
Karolina Goraus
PhD Candidate
Faculty of Economic Sciences
University of Warsaw
PhD Seminar
12 January 2015

2. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Table of contents
1 Motivation and insights from literature
2 Data and methodology
3 Results
4 Conclusions

3. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Motivation and insights from literature
Motivation
Women’s empowerment on the labor market has impact on:
investment in children human capital and health (Attanasio et al. 2002,
Doss 2006, Schady et al. 2006, Schady et al. 2009, Rubalcava et al. 2009,
Luke and Munschi 2011)
the empowerment of future generations of women (Fortin 2005, Farre and
Vella 2013)
overall economic development (Klasen 2000, Klasen et al. 2009, Duflo
2008)
Trends in the world
According to the World Development Report (World Bank, 2012) gender
inequalities in activity rates are universally decreasing around the world, both in
advanced and developing countries.
Situation in transition countries
We find that transition economies are the exception where the situation over
the last 20 years in same cases stagnated, and in some even worsened.

4. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Motivation and insights from literature
Gender difference in activity rates in EU-15 and transition countries
Data: Eurostat

5. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Motivation and insights from literature
Goals and expectations I
Challenges in accurate measurement of progress in gender equality on the
labour market:
labor market outcomes of women that are more similar to men can reflect
less discrimination, but can also be fully or partially related to differences
in characteristics
positive (or negative) changes might be underestimated because they
affect only some generations, while the outcomes are often measured for
the whole labour force
it is difficult to disentangle the impact of women’s preferences from some
external factors influencing their decisions

6. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Motivation and insights from literature
Goals and expectations II
We deal with each of mentioned issues:
we control for individual characteristics when comparing women and men
we implement decomposition techniques to extract the cohort effects for
analysed changes of selected measures
we construct the measures that have a potential to reflect the willingness
and possibilities of women to work, as well as their attitudes towards equal
positions of women and men on the labour market
Analysed indicators
1 Willingness to work
2 Access to jobs
3 Preference for equal access to jobs

7. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
1 Motivation and insights from literature
2 Data and methodology
3 Results
4 Conclusions

8. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Data
European Union Labor Force Survey (EU LFS)
Data set compiled by the Eurostat on the basis of Member States LFS.
Data is available not only for the post-accession years, but also covers the
longest possible pre-accession period.
World Values Surveys (WVS)
Collected within a global research project concentrated on people’s values
and beliefs.
Contains very rich information concerning gender equality: there are
questions regarding respondent’s attitude towards women’s various
possible roles, like mother, wife or worker.
Unfortunately, this data is not collected regularly for all the selected
countries.

9. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Transition countries EU LFS Western Europe countries EU LFS
Bulgaria 2000-2012 Austria 1995-2012
Czech Republic 1998-2012 Belgium 1992-2012
Estonia 1997-2012 Denmark 1992-2012
Hungary 1997-2012 Finland 1995-2012
Latvia 1998-2012 France 1993-2012
Lithuania 1998-2012 Germany 2002-2012
Poland 1997-2012 Greece 1992-2012
Romania 1997-2012 Ireland 1992-2012
Slovakia 1998-2012 Italy 1992-2012
Slovenia 1996-2012 Luxembourg 1992-2012
Netherlands 1996-2012
Portugal 1992-2012
Spain 1992-2012
Sweden 1995-2012
United Kingdom 1992-2012

10. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Transition WVS Western Europe WVS
countries countries
Bulgaria 1997,2005 Austria
Czech Republic 1991 Belgium
Estonia 1996, 2011 Denmark
Hungary 1982,1998,2009 Finland 1981,1996,2005
Latvia 1996 France 2006
Lithuania 1997 Germany 1997,2006,2013
Poland 1989,1997,2005, 2012 Greece
Romania 1998,2005,2012 Ireland
Slovakia 1990,1998 Italy 2005
Slovenia 1995,2005,2011 Luxembourg
Netherlands 2006,2012
Portugal
Spain
Sweden 1981,1996,1999,2006,2011
United Kingdom 1998,2005

11. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Analysed indicators I
Willingness to work
We construct the measure of probability of being active for individuals
within a particular set of demographic characteristics.
P(active = 1|gender) = α+β1age+β2edum+β3eduh+β4relation+β5kid+β6urban
For each woman we constructed also the measure of relative disadvantage
in activity on the labor market, understood as the difference between the
probability of men with the same set of characteristics to be active, and her
probability to be active.

12. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Analysed indicators II
Access to jobs
We apply the same procedure as in the willingness to work, but we restrict
the sample to those individuals who are (1) wage-employed or (2) actively
searching for a job.
Preference for equal access to jobs
We treat percentages of women in the World Values Survey sample who
agreed with the statement: ”When jobs are scarce, men should have more
right to a job than women” as a measure of their beliefs in equal
participation.

13. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Data and methodology
Deaton decomposition
This method allows us to separate age, birth cohort and year effects using
only one regression.
Birth cohort is just the difference between current year and age, the
inclusion of the three variables in a regression results in perfect collinearity
→ following Deaton we assume that year effects are orthogonal to a time
trend and they add up to zero.
We can construct new year variables as follows:
dt = yeart − [(t − 1)year2 − (t − 1)year1]

14. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
1 Motivation and insights from literature
2 Data and methodology
3 Results
4 Conclusions

15. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Women’s activity rates by country group and age category
a) 2000 b) 2010

16. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Differences in men’s and women’s activity rates by country group and age
category
a) 2000 b) 2010

17. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in willingness to work: cohort effect in Western Europe
countries

18. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in willingness to work: cohort effect in Transition
countries

19. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in willingness to work: age effect in Western Europe
countries

20. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in willingness to work: age effect in Transition countries

21. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in access to jobs: cohort effect in Western Europe
countries

22. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in access to jobs: cohort effect in Transition countries

23. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in access to jobs: age effect in Western Europe
countries

24. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Gender differences in access to jobs: age effect in Transition countries

25. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Cohort effects - regression
cohort effects - active cohort effects - employed
transition country -0.0558* -0.0627**
born between 1937-1941 0.245*** 0.0372**
born between 1947-1951 0.180*** 0.0385**
born between 1952-1956 0.147*** 0.0320**
born between 1957-1961 0.111*** 0.0269*
born between 1962-1966 0.0780*** 0.0206
born between 1967-1971 0.0513*** 0.0142
born between 1972-1976 0.0258 0.00655
born between 1937-1941 * transition -0.241*** -0.0323
born between 1942-1946 * transition -0.213*** -0.0832***
born between 1947-1951 * transition -0.179*** -0.0593**
born between 1952-1956 * transition -0.150*** -0.0493**
born between 1957-1961 * transition -0.115*** -0.0394
born between 1962-1966 * transition -0.0854*** -0.0298
born between 1967-1971 * transition -0.0566* -0.0196
born between 1972-1976 * transition -0.0201 -0.00748
country fixed effects included included
constant 0.0326 -0.0145
Observations 219 219
R-squared 0.864 0.812
Note: Reference cohort group: born between 1977-1981. Standard errors in parentheses.
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

26. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Age effects - regression
age effects - active age effects - employed
transition country -0.0759*** -0.0713***
age: 30-34 -0.0233* -0.0133
age: 35-39 -0.0657*** -0.0292**
age: 40-45 -0.106*** -0.0435***
age: 45-49 -0.141*** -0.0553***
age: 50-55 -0.175*** -0.0650***
age: 30-34 * transition -0.00724 0.00485
age: 35-39 * transition 0.0103 0.0124
age: 40-45 * transition 0.0369* 0.0201
age: 45-49 * transition 0.0627*** 0.0267
age: 50-55 * transition 0.0876*** 0.0315*
country fixed effects included included
constant 0.0617*** 0.0604***
Observations 150 150
R-squared 0.854 0.831
Note: Reference age group: 25-29. Standard errors in parentheses.
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

27. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Results
Preference for equal access to jobs
Table: Percentage of females who answered ”I agree with the statement: when job are
scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” - cohort patterns
1936- 1942- 1947- 1952- 1957- 1962- 1967- 1972- 1977-
1941 1946 1951 1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981
Transition 90s 41.70% 35.10% 36.20% 33.60% 25.10% 24.90% 19.90% 23.50% 16.40%
countries 2000s 33.70% 20.70% 25.00% 26.50% 22.80% 21.80% 18.70% 18.10% 18.10%
2010s 31.80% 32.10% 30.20% 24.40% 23.90% 23.70% 19.50% 21.80% 19.20%
Western 90s 25.40% 27.70% 20.50% 18.20% 14.70% 10.80% 9.10% 5.40% 6.40%
countries 2000s 21.20% 12.10% 14.20% 8.40% 9.50% 6.70% 9.00% 9.30% 6.70%
2010s 13.60% 12.70% 8.40% 7.90% 7.70% 4.30% 4.90% 3.70% 6.20%
Table: Percentage of females who answered ”I agree with the statement: when job are
scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” - age patterns
25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59
Transition 90s 22.70% 24.70% 24.70% 31.40% 38.20% 34.10% 42.50%
countries 2000s 18.40% 15.80% 22.10% 21.10% 21.30% 26.10% 26.40%
2010s 15.30% 21.20% 19.70% 19.00% 24.30% 21.80% 25.40%
Western 90s 9.00% 11.10% 13.00% 18.10% 21.70% 26.50% 25.70%
countries 2000s 7.20% 8.90% 8.50% 6.90% 11.10% 8.10% 13.70%
2010s 1.60% 6.20% 4.40% 4.90% 5.00% 7.10% 6.00%

28. Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Conclusions
Conclusions
in EU-15 countries women born later enjoy a more equal position on the
labour market
women are not only participating more, but their chances to find
employment are also more similar to chances that men enjoy
women attitudes towards equal gender positions on the labour market
changed in line with the labour market participation and employment rates:
younger cohorts less often agreed to the statement that men should have
more right to a job under tight labour market conditions
the picture for transition economies is much more puzzling
younger cohorts are more empowered in their views concerning equality on
labour market
gender differences in probabilities to be active are among younger
generations similar or even bigger when compared to older generations