Gender and the European Labour Market

Changing industrial relations and family settings, in combination with demographic trends have led to a dramatic change in labour market structures and policies. The male breadwinner model, with the gendered division of paid and unpaid work, no longer characterises the behaviour of a significant proportion of European families. Rather the adult worker model, in which it is assumed that both men and women are active on the labour market, serves as a normative framework, inspiring both the labour market behaviour of individual men and women as well as the policy measures at national and international level.The book presents state of the art research on women's current position in European labour markets. It combines analysis of the latest trends in employment, pay, occupational segregation, working time, unpaid work, social provisions (especially care provisions) and the impact of the financial crisis, with overall assessment of the actual impact of the European Employment Strategy and the specific impact of key policies, such as taxation and flexicurity.