El empleo femenino en España y en la Unión Europea

Abstract

The incorporation of women in the public sphere can be regarded as one of the most important revolutions occurred over the past century. However, it is still an incomplete revolution due to the fact that the new gender roles in the public sphere have not meant a change in the traditional roles in the private sphere. The impossibility of reconciling public and private responsibilities and the unpaid nature of the latter contribute in great measure to gender inequality. This imbalance in the distribution of time devoted to the public and the private spheres, results in the decre¬ase of competitiveness of European women in the labour market with the subsequent lower numbers of women’s employment in Europe and the precarious nature of much employment. Temporary employment, part time jobs, lower wages or occupational and sectorial segregation are the distinctive features that typify the employment of European women. Spain, in particular, has one of the most unbalanced models of the EU regarding sexual division of labour, resulting in Spanish men having the majority of paid work, while Spanish women support the weigh of most of the unpaid work. This explains Spain’s being the fourth European country with the largest gender gap inemployment (after Italy, Greece and Malta), the second in unemployment (after Greece), the third in temporary work, and its being above average concerning sectorial and occupational segregation. Segregation that has, against all logic, increased in the past few years.