Gender, Educational Attainment, and Job Quality in Germany, Sweden, and the UK: Evidence from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey (original) (raw)
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Working conditions in the European Union: The gender perspective
European Foundation, 2007
This report examines the extent of occupational segregation by gender and how it impacts on the quality of women’s and men’s working lives. The analysis is based on findings from the fourth European Working Conditions Survey carried out across 31 countries, including the 27 EU Member States. The report highlights differences between men and women in key aspects of job quality, such as working hours, job satisfaction, work–life compatibility and work-related health outcomes
Gender, Jobs and Working Conditions in Europe
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications for the European Communities. 92pp., 2002
The growing proportion of women in employment in recent decades has been one of the major changes affecting the European labour market. However, despite the increasing presence of women in the labour force, gender segregation remains a persistent feature. There is still a 'glass ceiling' reinforced by workplace cultures and informal procedures that makes it difficult for women to break through into the higher levels of management. The unequal division of unpaid household work also persists, as women continue to bear the main responsibility for running the home and looking after children, even when employed full-time. This report examines the gender pattern of differences and similarities in working conditions in Europe, drawing on the findings of the Foundation's Third European Survey on Working Conditions 2000. It explains the reasons for the persistence of gender segregation and sets out policy recommendations for action aimed at decision makers in this field. The report also considers whether the established indicators of working conditions need to be revised to make them more 'gender-sensitive' to particular issues primarily associated with women's jobs, women's experiences in the workplace, or workload issues within households.
You can’t always get what you want: gender differences in job satisfaction of university graduates
Applied Economics, 2014
Previous literature stressed on the gender differences in job satisfaction and the factors influencing the job satisfaction of men and women. Two rationales are usually provided for the finding that women tend to be relatively more satisfied with their jobs than men although disadvantaged in labour markets: first, women may have relatively lower expectations of career and income, and second, they may attach relatively less importance to extrinsic rewards than men. In order to analyse whether substantial gender differences exist already at the beginning of the career, we employ information of over 20000 graduates collected through a large-scale survey of German university graduates who recently entered the labour market. We find that the job satisfaction of female graduates is on average slightly lower than the job satisfaction of male graduates, but our results do not point to substantial gender differences. In our sample of highly qualified individuals, men and women are very similar in what they want from their jobs and also in their perceptions of what they get. While our results point to substantial similarity of men and women in the early career stage, gender differences may emerge at later stages of the career life cycle.
Cross-National Analysis of Gender Differences in Job Satisfaction
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
Research over the past two decades has found significant gender differences in subjective job satisfaction, with the result that women report greater satisfaction than men in some countries. This paper examines the so-called "gender paradox" using data from the European Social Survey for a subset of fourteen countries in the European Union. We focus on the hypothesis that women place higher values on certain work characteristics than men, which explains the observed differential. Using estimates from Probit and ordered Probit models, we conduct standard Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions to estimate the impact that differential valuations of characteristics have on the gender difference in self-reported job satisfaction. The results indicate that females continue to report higher levels of job satisfaction than do men in some countries, and the difference remains even after controlling for a wide range of personal and job characteristics and working conditions. The decompositions suggest that a relatively small share of the gender differential is attributable to gender differences in the weights placed on working conditions in most countries. Rather, gender differences in job characteristics contribute relatively more to explaining the gender-job satisfaction differential.
Gender and job satisfaction in OECD countries
Economics and Business Letters
Gender differences in labour market outcomes are frequently reported. Earlier findings on associations of job satisfaction and gender reveal mixed results. Majority of empirical results indicate that women report higher levels of job satisfaction than men whereas others find no gender differences in job satisfaction. This study explores gender differences in job satisfaction by utilizing the Survey of Adult Skills for OECD countries. Employing the Balanced Worth Vector (BWV) procedure for data analysis, this study contributes to literature by presenting additional cross-national evidence from various regions of the world. Our findings reveal that there are heterogeneities in gender-gap paradox of job satisfaction across OECD countries.
Industrial Relations Journal, 2008
Promoting job quality and gender equality are objectives of the European Employment Strategy (EES) in spite of a downgrading of the attention given to both in the revised employment guidelines and the relaunch of the Lisbon Process. However, advances on both of these objectives may be important complements to the employment rate targets of the EES, as access to good quality jobs for both sexes is likely to help sustain higher employment rates. While the European Commission has a broad view of the concept of job quality in practice, it relies on a selection of labour market type indicators that say little about the quality of the actual jobs people do. Using data from the 2005 European Working Conditions survey, we analyse job quality along three dimensions: job content, autonomy and working conditions. We conclude that gender and occupational status, along with other job characteristics such as working time and sector, have more influence on an individual's job quality than the country or 'national model' they are situated in. Our results also demonstrate the value of developing indicators of job quality that are both gender sensitive and derived at the level of the job rather than the labour market in order to advance EU policy and academic debate on this topic.
BMC Public Health, 2019
Background: This study aims to explore the development of job demands, decision authority and social support within and between industries with different gender composition in Sweden between 1991 and 2013. Methods: Cross-sectional data from 12 waves of the Swedish Work Environment Surveys (1991 to 2013), comprising in total 109,698 respondents, were used. Industries were classified in 7 categories according to its gender composition and main activity, comprising two female-dominated, three gender-mixed and two male-dominated industries. Proportions of workers reporting high job demands, low decision authority and poor social support between 1991 and 2013 were calculated. Logistic regression analyses were performed to estimate variation across time, using 1991 as the reference category, and between industries, using knowledge intensive services as the reference category. Estimates for high job demands, low decision authority and poor social support were presented as average marginal effects (AMEs). Results: The probabilities of reporting low decision authority were higher in education and health and social care during the whole study period, for both genders, compared with the reference category of knowledge intensive services. The probability of having high job demands were higher for men and women in education, and women in health and social care, compared with the reference category. Men in the male dominated industries had increased job demands over time, compared to the beginning of the study period (1991). The probability of reporting poor social support was higher in the later than in the earliest time period for women in the female-dominated industry health and social care as well as in the gender-mixed labour intensive services industry. Conclusions: There has been a negative development of job demands and decision authority in the femaledominated industries education and health and social care in Sweden, whereas social support has developed more negatively for women in health and social care and in labour intensive services.
Work autonomy, work pressure, and job satisfaction: An analysis of European Union countries
The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2014
Based on European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) micro-data, we show that, on average, work autonomy has declined and work pressure has increased in most European Union countries since 1995. Since such evolution is substantially detrimental for workers, we examine whether workers of varied skill levels in different countries have been equally impacted. Descriptive analysis shows that low-skill clerical workers are the most affected and that Scandinavian countries fare better. Econometric results show that the decline in job satisfaction is due mainly to the increase in work pressure—which might be reaching a limit for high-skill workers—and that job satisfaction is most affected by an increase in work pressure when this is not accompanied by greater work autonomy.
EUROPEAN RESEARCH STUDIES JOURNAL, 2021
Purpose: The main purpose of this article is to define the level of education of the European Union citizens and to determine the gaps in this scope between men and women. Design/Approach/Methodology: The analyzed indicators are percentage of the population with tertiary education (X1), percentage of early school leavers (X2), the participation rate in preschool education (X3), and adult participation in learning (X4). What was also analyzed were such indicators as the percentage of employed graduates (Y1) and general employment level (Y2). The source of empirical data was the information collected by the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) about 28 member states of in the years 2005-2019. Findings: In recent years, the EU's education (28) member states citizens have been growing steadily. However, according to ISCED, more women than men improve their knowledge and gain an education at the education level of 5-8, and the gap in this scope is getting wider, to the detriment of men. This diversification can be observed particularly in such countries as Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. Practical Implications: In recent years, one could observe that the EU member states that recent graduates' employment rate remained stable at a high level and that the total employment rate increased steadily. This applies both to men and women. Originality/Value: For women, education and qualifications raising on the labor market should be important as the research indicated significant correlations between the indicators that characterize the differences in the level of education of women in the EU (28) countries and the differences in their employment, which was not observed in case of men.