ABSTRACT
This chapter explores changes and continuity in women’s role in wage work, care work and welfare. The first section explores women’s contribution to trends in the employment rate in Europe. It demonstrates that the rising employment rate for women has partly compensated for the decline in men’s employment rate and hence reduced the overall decline in the European employment rate. Much of the increased employment rate for women has occurred due to the decline in inactivity rates of women in the core working years, thereby reducing the gender divergence in labour market behaviour. However, current measures of labour market activity are also shown to be inadequate for capturing the full range of gender differences in labour market integration; employment rates may overstate women’s integration into wage work, while unemployment rates understate the proportion of women excluded from the labour market.
