Women Labor Market Performance in Europe: Trends and Shaping Factors

We investigate the changes in women's employment patterns across EU countries over the last 20 years both in terms of labour market participation and type of jobs using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. By means of a logistic multilevel model, we then pin down the role played by institutional, policy and cultural changes in explaining women's employment through a multilevel analysis. The results of our cross-country comparative research will be then synthesized using a quantitative index that measures the degree of similarity between the group of interest (female) and the reference group (male) in each European country. Such an index will allow us to identify countries were differences between teh two groups are more/less pronounced along a series of economic, cultural and institutionslfactors. Such a picture is essential to understand potential policy response differences across European countries. The key results indicate that the increasing level of education, the diminishing negative effect of children and cohort effects have played an important role in explaining women's participation to the labour market, though with important differences across EU countries characterized by different institutional and cultural settings. Moreover, in the Mediterranean countries, the improvement in women labour market participation is positively correlated with a general decline in the quality of occupation, with an increase in the share of women involved in temporary positions and (involuntary) part time jobs