Gender in the crisis and prospects for the future

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how the crisis has affected current and future perspectives for job quantity and quality from a gender standpoint. It starts with a summarised overview of existing literature on the gendered effects of economic downturns. It continues with a statistical analysis of how European labour markets were hit by the crisis analyzing developments in labour market indicators that capture both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of female and male employment and poverty. The aim of the third section is to come to a better understanding of the general job potential that has been shaped by the crisis for both female and male workers in Europe focusing particularly on smart jobs, green jobs, and white jobs. Finally, the paper presents a critical assessment of both the policies that have been adopted throughout the EU in response to the crisis and the indicators that are currently being used to monitor progress towards or away from gender equality on Europe’s labour markets. In this critical assessment of the gendered impact of anti-crisis measures and policies due attention is given both to job quantity and job quality. As such the “theoretical” job potential is put to the test of recent policy developments in order to distil the real-life post-crisis gendered job potential as it is supported by policy-makers throughout the EU