Women, work, and labour market policy

This chapter provides a comparative overview of what we currently know about the specific impact of LMPs on women across various European countries with different institutional and policy arrangements. While contemporary economics and political economy scholarship, especially within the tradition of feminist theory, has abundantly examined how employment-supporting public policies, such as provision of childcare, maternity leaves, educational opportunities for women, child benefits and other government programmes, affect female opportunities for work, less attention has been paid to the role of LMPs and their implications for women in the labour force. At the same time, we know that women earn less than men and tend to have more precarious and unstable attachments to the labour market, even in the more advanced welfare states. Moreover, class, race, and immigration status have strong interaction effects with gender within the context of contemporary labour markets. LMPs are therefore particularly relevant for women.