ABSTRACT
The socio-economic changes taking place in East Central Europe have brought about considerable shifts in the current position of women and men compared to the past. One area in which such changes have been experienced concerns the position of men and women in the labour market. The level of employment, wage differences and vertical and horizontal gender segregation are influenced not only by the emergence of the market economy, the pace of economic restructuring, and the external effects of globalisation and European integration, but also by institutional, cultural and social frameworks. However, macro-economic and macro-social transformations are experienced by individuals at the level of locality. For example, Walby’s (1994) conception of differentiated patriarchy permits the recognition of the diversity of women’s situation between different areas or localities without giving up the concept of male domination and female subordination (Perrons 1998). Therefore, in evaluating paid work in relation to the division of labour in the household, as an important element of patriarchy, a first step should be to shift the emphasis of analysis from the national level to the examination of sub-national spatial differences.
