Gender segregation at work over the business cycle: evidence from selected EU countries

In this paper, we investigate whether gender employment rate responses to upward and downward fluctuations in the business cycle are symmetric and whether these responses differ depending on gender employment segregation in sectors and on different type of welfare states using the Esping-Andersen’s classification. We use the VAR model both in linear and non-linear (asymmetric) specification of GDP shocks and impulse response function. We find that the evidence of discouraged worker effect is weak (for women in Poland in education and Portugal in construction) suggesting not the hidden unemployment but rather the phenomenon of involuntary part-time worker becoming more common with the increase of precarious employment. Besides, we find that the pattern of gender employment adjustments to GDP fluctuations indicates that the gender sectoral segregation is deeply entrenched feature within given economic sectors (construction, education, accommodation) in all studied countries (Germany, Poland, Portugal). Hence, this stagnation of gender segregation contributes to the preservation of gender pay differentials in spite of many years of equal pay legislation in the EU members.