Structural Labour Market Change and Gender Inequality in Earnings

Research from the US argues that women will benefit from a structural labour market change as the importance of social tasks increases and that of manual tasks declines. This article contributes to this discussion in three ways: (a) by extending the standard framework of task content of occupations in order to account for diversity of social tasks; (b) by developing measures of occupational task content tailored to the European context; and (c) by testing this argument in 13 European countries. Data are analysed from the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations Database and the European Structure of Earnings Survey. The analysis demonstrates that relative to men the structural labour market change improves earnings potential of women working in low- and middle-skilled occupations but not those in high-skilled occupations. Women are overrepresented in low paid social tasks (e.g. care) and are paid less for analytical tasks than men.