ABSTRACT
In a long perspective the segregation patterns have changed towards a more even distribution of women and men over occupations and sectors in the labour market in most countries (Rubery et al., 1999). At the same time, countries with high female employment rates have high segregation levels. Studies on the development in the European Union show that there is a positive correlation between employment rates and segregation levels (Rubery et al., 1999; Emerek et al., 2001). As more women enter the labour market they are recruited into sectors and work tasks that already are defined as ‘female’ jobs, and they are doing service jobs earlier performed in the household but now transformed into market work. Growing welfare state labour markets produce health, education and services and have become major employers of women. The dual dependency between the post industrial welfare state and the growing female labour force has formed new relations in the labour market and in the political arena. Women are dependent on the welfare state for the supply of child and elderly care to be able to take a job at the same time as these services are their major labour market, at least in the Nordic welfare states. In other welfare state regimes the relations are different, and as can be seen from many studies, the support from the state to develop a social infrastructure that support women’s paid employment varies (Lewis, 1993; Orloff, 1993; Plantenga and Hansen, 1999a and b; Sainsbury, 1999). The retrenchment of the welfare state during the crises of the
1990s had gendered consequences. Plantenga and Hansen cited the Spanish expert in a benchmarking report from the EU network Gender and Employment:
Swedish experiences during the 1990s showed that certain groups were more vulnerable than others. In February 1999 the Swedish Government set up a commission of researchers to review welfare development in Sweden during the 1990s. The commission took the name ‘A Balance Sheet for the Welfare in the 1990s’. One conclusion from this work is that single mothers during the 1990s lived under worse conditions than other comparable groups in society (single fathers, single without children, cohabiting with and without children). Four patterns were prevailing:
Already in the beginning of the 1990s, single mothers had worse economic conditions than other comparable groups. This relatively bad economic situation was consolidated during the decade. The big changes occurred during the first half of the decade, the income level was reduced and the economic buffers were decreasing. Other groups that had experienced negative changes had an increase in the income level during the second part of the decade, but this was not happening for the single mothers (Gähler, 2001).
