Large difference in employment rates between men and women!
If you compare the employment rates in EU regions, you will notice that the female employment rates still lag behind the male rates in most of the regions.
The EU has set a policy target in this area of halving the gender employment gap from 11.7% in 2019 to 5.8% by 2030.
The green regions shown here are those that have already attained the target.
Source: Eurostat
I question the assumption behind this map, which is the idea that men and women must have work at the same rate and anything else is an aberration that needs to be addressed. The issue is more subtle than that.
I’ll speak from the perspective of a father who quit his job to raise his small children, knowing that it is complete career suicide (I worked in tech).
In my view a problem occurs when somebody wants to work and is unable to, as well as when somebody wants to quit working and is also unable to do so. And while there are some general trends where for example women often quit (paid) work for a few years to raise their families, that is only a problem when they would rather not, but this simplistic map (and narrative) doesn’t shed any light on that.
Likewise, how many fathers out there would love to raise their small kids but don’t because they know they will be destroying their careers to a degree that their female peers will not? This map does capture this issue, but the simplistic narrative that women sacrifice their careers to raise their children does not, when in practice the damage to their career is much less than a man doing the same thing.
Want a useful map? Poll people to find out why they are working instead of quitting, rather than having preconceived simplistic assumptions about what “is right”.
Even if I just accept your claim about men taking a worse career hit for leaving the workforce to raise their children…
Why are men taking a worse hit? Sounds like some kind of social injustice.
“You woman will take less of a career hit than I, so you should be the one to stay home and I’ll continue my career”
Why are men taking a worse hit? Sounds like some kind of social injustice.
I obviously agree, since it affects me personally. But the prevalent narrative around the employment gap is centered about how it affects women, ignoring how it affects men as well, and I’m trying to offer a more complete view.
“You woman will take less of a career hit than I, so you should be the one to stay home and I’ll continue my career”
That speech is very problematic, but how prevalent is it? You could have imagined this alternative:
“I want to take care of the kids, and since it’s not a big deal you man will have to keep working even though you also want to raise your family”
It’s made up, but so is yours.
Jup, it’s pretty bad for all who do not conform to the social expectation.
When a woman has a five year employment gap she is normal. If a man has a five year employment gap it’s suspicious. Saying “I raised my kids” should ideally be enough to justify it, but nevertheless that’s five years of experience other men have.
(This is incidentally also the largest factor of the gender payment gap. Both sexes are paid almost the same until children get into the picture. Most likely the woman will stay home and lose years of experience that their partner will get.)
Are you nuts? Women take a massive hit to their careers just for having the potential to take time to have babies.
Let’s make a different assumption. Let’s assume equal rates of desire for taking time to be with family among men and women. You would then see equal rates of employment between men and women. This map shows that’s not true and so if my assumption is true then there’s a problem for both genders.
Let’s assume equal rates of desire for taking time to be with family among men and women.
Instead of assuming anything, let’s poll and gather some evidence. How many men/women are employed/unemployed against their choice? What makes them take that difficult decision? What sorts of policies could help more people achieve what they want, rather than somebody else’s preconceived idea of what they should be doing?
Just fuck colorblind people in particular.
i mean. Who the fuck has thought:" yes thats a perfect contrast for the two sides of the scale"
Sorry for your blindness but green to red are very standard range colors for numerous things. Weather, heatmaps, elevation… What do you do for those?
Sorry for your gender gap but it is very standard for numerous things: employment, academic success, life expectancy… What do you do for those?
Talk about it so that people are aware of the problem and do something about it.
Just curious, but do the filters found in accessibility on most phones work at all to visualize this type of graphics?
What do you do for those?
I complain about them.
We are living in the year 2023.
Colorblind friendly palettes are not non existend.
https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/
Eurostat is an agency doing plots as their business. Professionals should think about coloring.
A bit of number play:
Assuming men work continuously between the ages 20 and 64, and all women do so as well, except for a short time where they do not work at all, then 5% of unemployment means 26.4 months of not working. That’s just over two years of difference in working time in this age range. A reasonable time to stay at home due to pregnancy and baby care in my opinion.
Why are you assuming it should only be women who take time off work due to child care? Sensible countries have equal parental leaves for both parents.
You’re still employed for those times though you are just on leave from work.
Why is there no UK data available?
It is always the same question, mimimi why is there no UK data available mimimi.
The answer is going to shock you:
As a reporting country, the UK is no longer legally obliged to transmit any data to Eurostat since the end of the transition period (31 December 2020). This concerns new reference periods, as well as revisions of data previously transmitted to Eurostat.
I guess this has something to do with the fact that the UK is on an ego trip for some time now.
Eurostats is the statistical office of the European Union 🇪🇺.
So the UK should start providing data to the statistical office of the European Union 🇪🇺, if their citizens wanted to see their country in statistics provided by the European Union 🇪🇺.
Mimimi but Turkey?
They provide data to Eurostats because, unlike the UK, they want to be a member of the European Union 🇪🇺.
Well, I guess that’s the reason. :)
the female employment rates still lag behind the male rates
I hope this is not seen as “women do not work as much as men” or it ignores unpaid care work:
Countries that do not have enough childcare facilities, such as kindergartens and schools that do not end in the middle of the day, rely on women not working full time. The same goes for care for the elderly and disabled, and then there is unpaid community work. On top of cultures that still think men should not do any care work or household chores.
Green countries do a lot to enable women to go to work full time, but still rely way too much on women accepting more of unpaid care work on top, than men. COVID was overcome a lot by putting even more unpaid work on women’s shoulders, when childcare facilities and schools closed, it also showed how many families were relying on grandparents to take care of the children when these had to be protected and could not do this care work anymore.
Germany ist still divided, because in the East the women were very much needed as workers, so the DDR provided close by, free childcare facilities for every child, school was the whole day and they gave women one day of the month free from work because they realized they did more care work than the men and needed time for that too (it was a dictatorship and childcare was also used to indoctrinate the children, not painting the DDR in good light here, just looking to explain the divide), women also had good chances on the career ladder …
In the West in the long years of the CDU being in the government, there was still the idea of you being a bad mother if you do not stay at home, childcare wasn’t made available as much as needed and school ended mid day for most schools, not to mention not enough done to give woman equality in the work environment, but given a lot of incentive for women to be stay at home mums. Now the same party wants more women to work full time because our industry suffers and of course there is no word about their part in it being the way it is.
But why is women’s employment the variable here? Why are women supposed to take the role of unpaid care workers.
They aren’t “supposed” to do it, but currently are doing it and I do not see it changing. I am 57 years old and it has barely changed over the last 50 years. So I want to make sure that the situation as it is is seen when looking at this map. I am all for equal care work for all genders, I always was, but most of the time it is only about “how do we get more women in full time jobs” and not equally about “how do we get men to do equal amounts of care work”.
Fair. While the focus hasn’t been on getting men to do more care work, I think that area has improved quite a bit… seemingly due to the push for higher female employment.
On the other hand, there’s the issue of general life affordability. Most families in the US require both parents to work to get by. This has been touted as a great social progress, but it’s also a great economic step back. I don’t think everyone’s idea of eutopia is 100% employment….
