Women’s disproportionate share of unpaid work impacts their careers. How do different European countries compare when it comes to the imbalance of unpaid work?
Gender inequality is not a new phenomenon, but the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how women tend to take on unpaid tasks outside of their jobs.
And this has a significant impact on their careers.
The double burden of women has an impact on their professional opportunities
One of the reasons women may struggle to engage and develop their careers is the burden of unpaid tasks they handle on a daily basis.
This could include childcare, eldercare or domestic chores. The gender imbalance has become particularly evident during the pandemic.
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) states that the unequal distribution of paid and unpaid work is “one of the root causes of inequality between men and women in society as a whole and in the labor market in particular” in his Gender Equality Index 2023.
For example, in the United Kingdom, women spend four hours a day on unpaid work, compared to just over two hours for men, according to the OECD.
This means that women actually have two full-time jobs: paid work and unpaid work.
More subtly, all the unpaid work women do affects their career progression.
For example, in a hybrid work environment, men are more likely to come into the office and are perceived as more productive, while women stay away more from the office to take care of their homes while still being part of the active population, according to Harvard Business Review.
For every 100 men promoted from entry-level to management, only 87 women were promoted, according to data collected in 2023 by the consulting firm McKinsey. This number is even lower (73) when it comes to women of color.
The vicious cycle of the pay gap
Unpaid care work is also directly linked to the gender pay gap within households.
As women’s salaries are generally lower, they are the ones who stop working to take care of children, unlike their male partners, according to Marie Sautier, a French sociologist, interviewed by the newspaper, The world.
And because women spend less time on average at work than men, they find it harder to advance their careers and continue to earn less, exacerbating the already widespread problem of the gender pay gap. women: In 2023, for example, the average pay gap between employees in the UK was around 14%, according to the country’s Office for National Statistics.
Additionally, women who take on a large share of unpaid work may find it difficult to work full time, which may limit their employment opportunities.
What are the solutions ?
The negative impact of unpaid work on women’s working lives is not inevitable, and there are ways to address it, experts say.
For example, public awareness campaigns, education programs and financial incentives for fathers to take parental leave could promote a more equitable distribution of the unpaid work load.
Sweden is the European country that tops the ranking in terms of equality between men and women, with a score of 82 out of 100 at EIGE. It also offers parents 480 days of paid parental leave, to be shared between them.
For comparison, France offers 25 days of paternity leave.
Overall, creating a culture supportive of working parents and caregivers could help women address the challenges of unpaid work and combat career stifling.
In 2019, the European Parliament adopted the directive on work-life balance“encouraging a more equitable sharing of parental leave between men and women and tackling the under-representation of women in the labor market”.
All EU member states had until August 2022 to transpose the directive into their national legislation.
But there is still a long way to go and the European Commission has decided to act: last April, it decided on infringement procedures against a series of EU member states, including Belgium, Ireland, Spain and France, which have not fully transposed the directive.
