Travail indépendant et inégalités de genre en Belgique

This article aims to analyse self-employment in Belgium through the prism of gender inequalities that characterize this form of labour market participation. Belgium is no exception in the European landscape regarding the lack of statistical data for analysing self-employment. We use data from the National Institute of Social Insurance for the Self-employed (INASTI) and the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS). These administrative data (covering the entire population of the self-employed) allow to shed light on two major gender inequalities that characterize self-employment: in terms of both access to this form of employment and the income it yields. We find that women are significantly underrepresented among self-employed workers - and that this cannot be explained by their sectoral distribution. Female self-employed workers are also found to perceive much lower incomes than self-employed men, and here too sectoral distribution cannot explain this inequality.