More difficult situation on labour market for women

07 March - Women are not less educated than men, but most of them are still employed on positions requesting lower qualifications and offering lower remunerations, although, fight with discrimination against women has been going on for 100 years. Investing in training and lifelong learning for women still seems to be economically unprofitable while difference of wages for men and women amounts still around 15 % in 27 member states in EU. In some countries it exceeds 20 %.

European Commission has noticed, that women continuously have serious problems with reconciling private and professional life. The rate of employment of women with children in age between 20 and 49 is lower by 15% compared to the medium level. According to the Eurostat's data, in Poland over 24 % of women in age between 24 and 54 are outside of the labour market and as much as half of them is in that situation because of the family reasons. In fact, institutions of children's care and other measures enabling reconciling private and professional life are in most of countries insufficiently available, of poor quality or too expensive. Meanwhile, in countries where state provides the families with cheap and good quality children's care, rate of women's employment is high, for example in Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Holland.

"In Poland it is an individual problem of the worker to reconcile a career with bringing up the children. If a woman wants to be a mother and to work, she needs to spend most of her wage on babysitters, manage to enrol her child to creche before his birth or (if she is really lucky) her child is taken care of by grandparents" - says Danuta Wojdat the Women's co-ordinator in the National Commission in NSZZ "Solidarnosc".

According to Danuta Wojdat, the latest government's ideas of changes in the employment code and increasing flexibility of the labour market strike mainly at women. The European Commission notices also, that women are more often than men threatened by poverty. Especially women of advanced age bringing up their children alone. Constant diversity between the men and women wages (medium 15% in EU) is one of the cause.

Ii is crucial to talk about diminishing diversities in wages and giving possibilities of reconciling private and professional life to women instead of restricting rights of workers employed in small firms, what will have its impact also on women.