Les femmes françaises face au chômage : une inégalité en déclin

Gender gaps in unemployment are rarely described in economic literature, but often used to demonstrate how difficult it is for a woman to find a job as easily as a man, when deciding to become active. Covering the last four decades, most of the indicators tone down the inequality; moreover, after widening until the mid 1980?s, the gap has been narrowing rapidly since the beginning of the 1990?s. We also address the gender gap by age, with similar results: a sharp decline during the last fifteen years, especially for young women. Finally, the gender gap in unemployment does not reveal a mismatch between the characteristics of job seekers (e.g. number of women or men competing for jobs, type of contracts, full or part-time work, etc.), and the structure of employment creations, which numerically favour women.