Woman, training and work

Gender! A Partnership of Equals
Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.

Central and Eastern Europe
A widening gap

The transition of the economies of Central and Eastern Europe from centrally planned to market-oriented has caused vast changes in the economic structure as well as in the political and social life in all of the countries of the region. Ten years down the road to transition and labour market restructuring, the three most pressing issues for women and gender relations in the world of work appear to be:

• Difficulties in securing employment and income in fluctuating labour markets
• Insufficient coverage and effectiveness of social protection and social services
• Inadequate participation of women in social dialogue and decision-making concerning the economic and political environment

However common characteristics between the countries, which were inherited from their communist past, have become less important as transition proceeds. Not only is the income gap widening between social groups and regions within a country, but there are quickly growing differences between countries and subregions which make it sometimes hard to speak of "one" region.

For example, several countries in the region, among others, are aiming their economic and social policy efforts exclusively at EU accession. Even among this group of countries, however, differences are sometimes quite large. Other countries face tremendous challenges, some even made worse by wars in the region during the past decade. Countries which formerly belonged to the Soviet are confronted with yet other, often even more problematic, situations with serious negative impact on the economic and social situation of their populations.

A changing labour market

Labour markets are one of the first and most important arenas of reform in the transition process. With the goal of a more efficient allocation of human resources, reduced costs and enhanced productivity, Central and Eastern European labour markets have become laboratories for still ongoing restructuring experiments, often with a different impact for men and women. Job losses and rising unemployment, skyrocketing in some countries and regions in the 1990s, and an increasingly unequal distribution of income caused by rising poverty, were immediate consequences of the restructuring process and the economic recession - and slow recovery - of the 1990s. 

In many respects, however, both data and its interpretation are still insufficient to draw even preliminary conclusions about the long-term consequences of the ongoing processes. Reports from the region are therefore still too often based more on anecdotal evidence than comparable data. Variables which need to be studied more thoroughly in order to assess the gender dimension of labour market restructuring include: labour force participation rates, unemployment, underemployment and informal sector employment, job segregation, wage levels and gender-pay differentials, as well as unpaid family work and care provision, to name only the most important ones.

One characteristic of the former communist economies was the high participation of women in the labour force; in most countries of the region, about 50%. Their high participation rate in the past has been ascribed to the ideological push for women's involvement in economic and political life, to economic necessity and the need to provide for a decent family income. The economic, political and social systems were developed in such a way that women's presence in public life was assured. Successive socialist governments took a number of measures to ensure women's continued participation in the economic sphere. To achieve this goal, the socialist discourse on the role of women in society repeatedly employed arguments which appeared to be drawn from feminist theory (but in fact were only feminist in appearance). Thus, when socialism came to be discredited, this may have led to a somewhat discredited image of working women. Since the beginning of the transition, women's role as family care-takers has been emphasized also, and as a consequence, the women's movement has made little progress in transition countries. It clearly needs to be strengthened both inside and outside of political parties 

While much worry has been expressed about the decline in women's labour force participation during transition, it is still higher overall than in most industrialized countries in Western Europe. Now, ten years after the reforms began, it is becoming clear that although women have suffered more than men from job losses in some countries, this has not been the case everywhere. Instead, the extent to which job losses have affected women and men differently depends on the prior economic structure and job segregation, and on the changing gender connotations of jobs as their responsibilities and pay change, and men move into formerly "female" jobs (and vice versa). Many women have also found an alternative to lack of full-time work by working part-time.

Thus, the extent to which women are pushed out of a tense labour market is not only influenced by the availability of jobs, but also by cultural values, and the gender division of labour, or, more broadly, gender relations in society. The interrelation of these factors is highly culture-specific, depending on intervening forces, such as the influence of the church, and varies strongly not only between countries, but even between regions and cultural groups within the same country. These interactions are difficult to assess, however, because labour markets are severely distressed, and unemployment and underemployment are very high in most countries of the region.

Decent employment, reasonable income

Throughout the region, unemployment is more often a problem for women than for men, with higher unemployment rates - in many cases consistently higher. Moreover, unemployed women are generally exposed to a greater risk of remaining unemployed for a longer time. Women are also very much affected by hidden unemployment and by work in the informal sector. Both are growing problems in the countries of the region, but gender-specific data and analysis are still lacking. As is also true in Western Europe, women are considerably less likely than men to be self-employed or to be employers, for reasons which are not always clear. However, since self-employment is often a form of hidden unemployment, and does not provide for decent income opportunities, an analysis beyond the collection of data is called for to determine where self-employment enhances people's opportunities and choices.

The gender segregation of employment inherited from communist times has generally been retained, and often reinforced, during transition. Women work overwhelmingly in certain fields such as textiles, office work, health and education, the public sector and services in general, and in low-paid positions of little authority. Women are very often paid less for equal work and work of equal value, but job evaluations would have to take place to grasp the extent of the problem and rectify such a bias. As a consequence, throughout most of the region women's income is lower than men's, and even well-qualified women find it difficult to secure a decent income through adequate employment. 

In any case, women should be encouraged to opt for education in professions outside those traditionally considered as "suitable" for them. Women also need competitive skills, so they need to be given access to guidance to quality education and training for professions demanded by the labour market. And they should be encouraged to undergo retraining when necessary to enhance their ability to transfer skills where they are needed in a labour market in transition.

Social protection and social services

As mothers and heads of households, women often depend on social services and, all too often, insufficient income support through social protection schemes. Due to ideological shifts and budget constraints, Central and Eastern European states during transition have been moving away from assuming full responsibility for the social protection of their citizens. Subsidies and support infrastructure for the provision of social services, such as kindergartens and after-school care, etc., have been cut back, thus shifting the responsibility for social protection to the private sector and back to the family. As a result, social protection has become more precarious, and it has become more difficult for all employees to combine family, work, and social responsibilities. Where such changes have met with a traditional distribution of tasks and responsibilities between men and women, they have hit women harder than men by reinforcing the traditional division of labour. In addition, the setback in reproductive rights which has taken place throughout the region, has also tended to strengthen traditional gender roles. 

During communism, social security schemes and mother- and child-welfare schemes were understood to be the road to guarantee women's presence in the workforce. Social policy was thus shaped in order to assist women in combining their maternal role with their responsibilities as employees. While enabling women to combine work with family responsibilities, communist social policy thus also served to reinforce traditional gender relations; i.e., women's traditional role in the home. In this way, gender inequalities and discrimination in employment were legitimized by state policies, at least to some extent. 

One measure to facilitate women's continuous economic activity inherited from socialism is still alive; namely, child-care leave which is remunerated as either a flat rate or a percentage of previous wages. Existing schemes are still generous in terms of earnings replacement and length of time. Child-care leave was introduced in most countries in the 1960s as a remedy to the bad quality of child-care facilities and to the absenteeism by mothers of young children. There are certain important drawbacks to this policy, however. It tends to justify wage or promotion discrimination based on the argument that such career interruptions are costly to employers and might affect their attitudes toward training. Also, the normally lengthy period of such leave contributes to gender stereotypes of men as the breadwinner and women as the care provider. In the long run, therefore, child-care leave may have a negative effect on women's employment. 

In times of more precarious social protection, there is even less leeway for changing traditional gender roles, and support networks of women in the family now often take over much of the unpaid reproductive and care work. In addition, tense labour markets nowadays can cause a situation where women cannot take advantage of existing benefits, such as maternity leave, for fear of otherwise endangering their employment situation. 

Simultaneously, social insurance schemes have undergone major reforms, most of them still ongoing, in all countries of the region. The reforms of health insurance and pension systems, however, are taking place without sufficient attention to women's needs and to the woman-specific nature of their professional paths between family and wage labour. On the contrary, in discussions about pension reforms, women are even blamed for putting the pension system under strain, because of their longer life expectancy and lower pension age. At the same time, however, unemployed women just short of pension age, as well as elderly women, are highly over-represented among the lowest income groups and people living in poverty.

It is difficult to say what impact the new social protection systems under design in the region will have on gender relations. Yet it might well turn out that for women who often shift between family and career, the individual pension accounts now in vogue, and the weakening of the redistributive character of the pension systems, might not be the preferred option. Often enough, however, women's voices remain unheard. 

Social dialogue and decision-making

Equality between men and women is legally guaranteed in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that discrimination is prohibited from a legal point of view, women face unequal treatment and marginalization in practice, not only in the labour market and social protection policy, but more broadly, at the decision-making level.

In the past, women's presence in public political life and the governing structures in political parties and other social organizations - often guaranteed through quotas - was without any real impact in many instances. With transition, however, women's presence has clearly decreased, so that the percentage of women in governing positions and parliaments in the region is now below the international average of about 20%. There is little indication that women's impact on political and economic decisions has been strengthened anywhere in the region. 

Women are sidestepped not only at the government level. Among all the social partners, in trade unions and in employers' organizations, women are struggling to come out of a subordinate and marginal role. Thus, women's interests are not yet equally represented in social dialogue and decision-making relevant to the world of work. Questions of women worker's rights and needs are not often given a place on the agenda. And even more so in the case of discussions on the changes required to shift responsibilities and power between women and men in order to allow for gender equality. Collective bargaining agreements on any level, for example, hardly ever include issues of gender equality or women worker's special interests and needs. 

A marginal position, however, might open up new opportunities for coalition-building. There is much scope for - at least partial - cooperation and productive dialogue between the people working for gender equality in governments, trade unions, employers' organizations, non-governmental organizations and academia. It is hoped that this will be the case. Only the future will show if such a hope is justified.

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