Women’s Day. On the occasion of 8 March, we would like to remind our readers that, together with Sciences-Po, the OFCE has developed the specialist Research Programme for Teaching and Knowledge on Gender Issues (PRESAGE). A number of posts on this blog have taken up the subject of occupational equality between men and women. Competitiveness at the expense of equality? By Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx Working time has made its appearance in the presidential campaign, and the idea that people work less in France than elsewhere is gaining ground. This is the subject of a report by XXX-Rexecode, which unfortunately does not take into account the sexual division of labour. The employment policies being implemented by European governments are not, however, gender neutral, and ignoring this gives a distorted view of the reality of how work is divided up in our economies: an integrated approach to equality (or “gender mainstreaming”), which requires thinking about the differential effects of public policies on women and men, is far from automatic. The counteranalysis to the Xxx-Rexecode report proposed by Xxxx Xxxxx and Xxxxxxx Xxxxx emphasises the importance of not just looking at full-time workers when trying to compare working hours and their impact on the labour market dynamics of the major European countries. Indeed, part-time workers represent 26% of all employees in Germany, against 18% in France, so it is misleading to exclude them from the analysis. It is well known that the distribution of full-time and part- time jobs is gender-biased: throughout Europe, women work part-time more than men do. While in France about 30% of women employees work part-time, the rate is 45% in Germany, and in both countries the part-time rate for men is below 10%. The gendered nature of part-time work is a factor in inequality: recall for example that in France working time explains about half of the wage gap between men and women (see in particular Ponthieux, Meurs). The issue of working time is central to the promotion of occupational equality. According to the methodological note to the Xxx-Rexecode report, “The annual data provided by Eurostat and published by Xxx-Rexecode in the paper, “La durée effective du travail en France et en Europe” |“Average effective working time in France and in Europe”] are the only data on average annual hours of work that is comparable between European countries.” It is unfortunate that in its order to Eurostat, Rexecode did not see fit to ask for a gender breakdown o...
