Conference Agenda

This study explores the role of early-life education choices in determining gender inequality in labour market outcomes in India. Over the last few decades, female labour force participation rates (FLFPR) and gender-based occupational segregation have varied across countries. India experienced a declining trend in FLFPR that puzzlingly coincided with a significant rise in female education, falling fertility rate, and high economic growth. While the literature has analyzed the relationship between women’s education and employment in this context, the discourse has focused mainly on the level of education rather than the type of education. In this study, using a nationally representative dataset from India, we investigate how stream choice at the school level has a gendered effect on individuals’ employment, occupation, and earnings. We use a household fixed effects model and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment to estimate causal effects. We show that women studying a science or business major in school have a higher likelihood of participating in the labour market, engaging in salaried employment, participating in a male-dominated occupation, and earning higher wages. Our study contributes to the literature on how the under-representation of girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) impacts occupational segregation and gender wage gap.

The COVID-19 pandemic harmed the livelihood, safety, and health of employees in the unorganized sector, particularly domestic workers, the majority of whom are female. The precariousness that characterizes this segment has also been further exposed and intensified. This study aims to check how much the pandemic has affected the lives of paid female domestic workers in India. This study addresses two research questions. First, if the pandemic has affected the wages they receive with the number of working hours. Second, if there is an associated relationship between the wages they get with their caste and gender. Using a sub- nationally representative survey, the study shows how many female domestic helpers in cities experienced enhanced control and surveillance at home and increased job and housing insecurity. In addition, many female workers noticed that their bargaining leverage was diminished, their jobs became more ambiguous, and their workloads increased with the partial relaxation of the lockdown. Social and cultural barriers have increased for domestic workers during the pandemic times. Such barriers and their stratum also determine who is getting to do what kind of housework and paid for it and how domestic workers are treated for different domestic tasks. Comparatively speaking, cooks make more money than cleaners and sweepers. Many women from lower caste work as domestic helpers in dominant-caste houses in rural areas without receiving any formal compensation; instead, they merely receive food and clothing. The study's expected findings will highlight the urgent need for a national policy and state assistance that explicitly targets domestic workers who are women; otherwise, the scenario of poverty, health risks, and social exclusion will persist.

Introduction

Self-employment represents a relevant part of the labour markets in the European Union (EU-27) (according to Eurostat, 25.2 million people in 2021, 32% women). In the period 2007 to 2021, the average rate of self-employment reached 14.1%, with clear divergences between Member States and by sex (Solesvik, Iakovleva and Trifilova, 2019; Jafari-Sadeghi, 2020). These figures are determined both by the recent economic situation, and by the structural transformations that have occurred in the last two decades.

However, the different forms that self-employment takes (Skrzek-Lubasinska and Szaban, 2019), its nature as atypical employment (ILO; OECD; Eurofound, 2015), as well as its dissimilar regulatory frameworks in each country (European Commission, 2006), make it a phenomenon complex to analyse, especially when considering the gender perspective.

Research questions

This research tries to identify the determinants of self-employment, distinguishing between women and men, in the EU27 countries since the Great Recession, in the face of two trends: the economic cycle and the socioeconomic transformations. The objective is to determine the importance of the "necessity and opportunity effects" by sex, from 2007 to 2021, considering both trends.

Methodology

Using the Eurostat database, we elaborate a model that, by sex, correlates the variables linked to the economic outlook (GDP, employment, productivity) and those structural variables (self-employment by type, branches of activity, according to technological level and knowledge intensity, occupations, and educational level).

Contribution to the literature

The paper intends to enrich the empirical literature of the developed economies regarding the influence of the economic cycle and the structural transformations in self-employment, from a gender perspective.

Findings

Among the structural elements that determine the behaviour of self-employment are the economic activities, their technological and knowledge intensity (Cuadrado, Iglesias and Llorente, 2005), the occupations, and the educational level, which constitutes one of the decisive factors (García Perea and Román, 2019), especially among women (Cueto, 2018). Besides, the link between self-employment and digitisation can be observed in the development of activities organised on the Internet. This is the case of teleworking accelerated by the pandemic (Eurofound, 2022) and with greater intensity for women (Molina, 2020).

The analysis is completed by incorporating the dimension of policies involving self-employment in Europe. The 2020 crisis served as a boost, in some countries, to introduce improvements in the protection of self-employment, with instruments such as the cessation of activity or self-employment rates (Spasova and Regazzoni, 2022).