Gender: Women's Labor Force Participation

Abstract

Women's labor market participation is shaped by the household division of labor, gender divisions of paid work, and gender ideology. These relationships are not fixed but are continually renegotiated, although they are historically and industrially specific and linked to particular stages of capitalism. EU policies encourage women's labor market participation, and in a number of states women's paid work is at record levels. However, vertical and horizontal segregation and gender pay gaps persist. Occupational segregation means women are disproportionately concentrated in health and social care, education, and retail work. Gendered hierarchies are reproduced by organizational practices justified through narratives of women's reproduction, sexuality, and emotionality. The failure of equal pay legislation to close the gender pay gap has prompted further legal measures in a number of countries, while the wider context of COVID‐19, climate change, and extension of automation and artificial intelligence offer possibilities for the reorganization of both paid and unpaid work, including a shorter working week, that could finally challenge gender inequality in the labor market.