ABSTRACT
The term ‘social exclusion’ is often used to refer to the unemployed, single parents and those in intense poverty (see Green 1995). This chapter focuses on gender as a form of social exclusion and specifically on gender inequality in employment in the regions of the European Union. Women workers experience social exclusion in a broad sense because they are disproportionately confined to the lower levels of paid employment, to insecure jobs and those with little opportunity for advancement (Neathey and Hurstfield 1995; Rodgers and Rodgers 1989). During the 1980s and 1990s there have been a number of important changes in the system of economic and social regulation within which regional economies develop. Explanations for this vary. References are made to the changing regime of accumulation: from Fordism to post-Fordism, to processes of globalisation or to the effects of austerity policies implemented to meet the convergence criteria for economic integration, or, indeed, to various different combinations and interrelationships between these developments. Whatever the explanation, the main underlying characteristic has been slower overall economic growth, at least in comparison with the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s (Dunford and Perrons 1994), and this slower growth has been associated with increasing inequality at a variety of levels, especially in the UK (Glyn and Miliband 1994; Rowntree Foundation 1995). In relation to the European regions, although some areas have prospered, development has been uneven. Moreover, the experience of the relatively prosperous regions has differed according to whether they are part of a growing or declining economy overall (Benko and Lipietz, cited by Dunford and Fielding 1994). Even in the more prosperous regions, forms of social polarisation and exclusion are found, and these have also been shown to have a gendered dimension (Perrons 1995b; McDowell and Court 1994; Sassen 1991).
