ABSTRACT
The difficult transition of Albania to a market economy is accompanied by a lower employment rate for women than for men, high levels of unemployment and migration, an increasingly ageing population and (according to the results of the Eurofound's European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS, 2016)), by many quality-of-life indicators below the EU28 average. This chapter provides an assessment of extended working life on different dimensions of well-being from a gender perspective referring to the impacts of social security reforms, labour market policies, education and training. The assessment is based on the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey and on the 2016 European Quality of Life Survey, in which Albania was involved for the first time in that year. The analysis considers the perceptions of people in the age group 50–64, which reports particularly high levels of insecurity in relation to job retention and the expected adequacy of their income in old age. Along with the overall gender gap in earnings, there are notable gender differences in the earnings of older professionals. Women predominate in the agricultural sector, a sector with the lowest income. Moreover, workers’ satisfaction with their own job is significantly lower than the average in Europe, with a further sharp decrease for workers aged 50+. The main question discussed in this chapter is how pension policies, employment services, education, training and regulated working relations in Albania shape extended working life, from a gender perspective.
Measures to improve women's employment and work-life balance have recently been adopted. The working week is limited to a maximum of 48 hours; paternity leave has been introduced; new mothers obtained the right to request paid rest time during the working day; and employment promotion programmes for women have been provided and prioritised. Yet social protection, employment services, education, lifelong learning and public services are ineffective at enabling women aged 50+ to extend their working lives; their detachment from the labour force is connected to their involvement in unpaid care work and the fact that they are often contributing family workers, have part-time employment and fewer opportunities for training. Women are typically engaged in informal employment, with lower insurance periods, lower pensions and higher levels of being at risk of poverty in retirement. All these characteristics require dedicated tailored policy measures. For each policy domain, relevant key reforms are discussed to indicate how Albania strategically addresses specific dimensions of extended working life from a gender perspective. Societal interventions for extended working life are crucial in the context of the EU integration of Albania.
