In this work, 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. We implement decomposition techniques to control for individual characteristics when comparing women and men within selected measures, as well as to extract the cohort effects for analysed changes.

1. Women in transition and today:
what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?
Karolina Goraus, PhD Candidate, University of Warsaw
(joint work with Lucas van der Velde and Magdalena Smyk)
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: Gender inequalities in activity rates are universally decreasing around the
world, both in advanced and developing countries (WDR, World Bank, 2012).
Situation in transition countries: Transition economies are the exception where the situation
over the last 20 years in same cases stagnated, and in some – even worsened.
Gender difference in activity rates in EU-15 and transition countries:
Goals and expectations
Challenges in accurate measurement of progress in gender equality on the labour
market:
1 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
2 positive (or negative) changes might be underestimated because they affect only some
generations, while the outcomes are often measured for the whole labour force
3 it is difficult to disentangle the impact of women’s preferences from some external factors
influencing their decisions
Contribution:
1 controlling for individual characteristics when comparing women and men
2 implementing decomposition techniques to extract the cohort effects for analysed changes of
selected measures
3 constructing 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 and methodology
1 Willingness to work
measure of probability of being active
P(active = 1|gender) = α + β1age + β2edum + β3eduh + β4relation + β5kid + β6urban
measure of relative disadvantage of each women in activity on the labor market (difference between the
probability of men with the same set of characteristics to be active, and her probability to be active)
2 Access to jobs
The same procedure, but we restrict the sample to those individuals who are
(1) wage-employed or (2) actively searching for a job
3 Preference for equal access to jobs
Measure of women’s belief in equal participation: ”When jobs are scarce, men should have
more right to a job than women”
Deaton decomposition
allows to separate age, birth cohort and year effects
birth cohort is just the difference between current year and age, the inclusion of the three
variables in a regression results in perfect collinearity → year effects are assumed to be
orthogonal to a time trend and to add up to zero
Data
1 European Union Labor Force Survey (EU LFS)
compiled by the Eurostat on the basis of Member States LFS
available not only for the post-accession years, but also covers the longest possible pre-accession period
2 World Values Surveys (WVS)
collected within a global research project concentrated on people’s values and beliefs
contains very rich information concerning gender equality, but is not collected regularly for all the selected
countries
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
Results: Women’s activity rates by age
EU transition EU transition EU15 countries, EU15 countries,
countries, 2000: countries, 2010: 2000: 2010:
Results: Gender differences in willingness to work - cohort effects
In Western Europe countries there are bigger gender differences among cohorts
born earlier than among the youngest one (baseline cohort)
In Transition countries the picture is puzzling: in some countries there are smaller
gender differences among cohorts born earlier than among the baseline cohort
Preference for equal access to jobs
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 90’s 41.70 35.10 36.20 33.60 25.10 24.90 19.90 23.50 16.40
countries 2000’s 33.70 20.70 25.00 26.50 22.80 21.80 18.70 18.10 18.10
2010’s 31.80 32.10 30.20 24.40 23.90 23.70 19.50 21.80 19.20
Western 90’s 25.40 27.70 20.50 18.20 14.70 10.80 9.10 5.40 6.40
countries 2000’s 21.20 12.10 14.20 8.40 9.50 6.70 9.00 9.30 6.70
2010’s 13.60 12.70 8.40 7.90 7.70 4.30 4.90 3.70 6.20
Conclusions
in EU-15 countries women born later enjoy a more equal position on the labour
market
women are participating more and their activity rates become more similar to
men with similar characteristics
women attitudes towards equal gender positions on the labour market
changed in line with the labour market participation and employment rates
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 than among older generations
Conference on Discrimination and Labour Market Research Linnaeus University
25 August 2015