ABSTRACT
Trends in the 1990s have reaffirmed the increasing importance of women to European labour markets. Chapter 8 explores the likely trends in both supply and demand for female labour into the millennium. The long-term prospects for women’s employment will depend to a large part on how successful European states are in achieving their long-term goal of raising the employment rate, counteracting recent trends towards declining employment rates. If employment rates are to rise, women’s labour will provide the key source of additional labour supply. More complicated scenarios, however, emerge if the longer-term trend is towards lower or static employment opportunities. There seems every prospect that women will continue to increase their supply of labour to the market, fuelled by their increasing investments in education, rising uncertainty over the stability of marriage as an alternative source of income support, and their increasing unwillingness to accept a subordinate role in the home and the labour market. However, this growing labour supply may face a decreasing demand for labour in some of the key areas of female employment such as clerical work and public services. While it has been maledominated employment areas that have faced the brunt of recent recessions, it may be the turn of female-dominated sectors in the next phases of restructuring. Under these conditions, traditional patterns of segregation may be subject to further pressure, with heightened competition between men and women to obtain entry into the labour market as the traditional systems of excluding prime-age women from the labour market finally break down.
