ABSTRACT
Services are playing an increasingly important role in all EU member states and account for the largest share of employment growth. At the same time, women’s participation and employment rates are also on the rise in all European countries, and it is mainly women who are taking the increased number of service-sector jobs now being created. Does this mean that the expansion of the service sector is creating new employment opportunities for women? Is Esping-Andersen correct when he declares that there is an indissoluble link between women’s employment and the post-industrial society? This at least is what he suggests in arguing that ‘at the risk of exaggeration, one might claim that women are becoming the axial principle of the post-industrial society, just like males were the indisputable protagonists of high industrialism’ (Esping-Andersen 2002:109).
