Austerity and gender inequalities in Europe in times of crisis

Abstract

The post-2008 recession and the countercyclical responses by European governments that followed triggered an extensive wave of fiscal adjustments. Although underpinned by widespread consensus, the implementation of such measures has also been severely criticised. While their effect on output and employment has been extensively investigated, their impact on wage inequality has received less attention. In this paper, we focus on the consequences of fiscal consolidation measures for gender inequality. After describing the literature-based conceptual framework of our analysis, we provide empirical evidence of the effect of fiscal consolidation on: (i) the adjusted gender wage gap, and (ii) the patterns of gender horizontal segregation. The analysis covers EU-28 countries in the years 2010-13. Results show that austerity measures (both tax-based and expenditure-based) impacted significantly on various aspects of gender wage inequality, putting at risk the relatively little progress achieved in Europe so far.

Wage premium in the state sector and state‐owned enterprises: Econometric evidence from a transition country in times of austerity

“…As an additional result of their study, they observe that the wage freeze caused a discontinuity in the public sector wage premium and they indicate a sectorial effect—the larger wage drop in education. Perugini, Žarković Rakić, and Vladisavljević () also investigate the effects of austerity on the gender pay gap and find that the sectoral differences explain a larger portion of the gender pay gap in the years after the austerity measures were introduced.…”

Taxation for gender equality: Proposal of measures for the Republic of Serbia on the road to European integration

“…Međutim, mogućnost korišćenja mera fiskalne politike za poboljšanje položaja žena predlaže se u NSRR u vidu aktivnosti finansijskog podsticaja za povećanje zaposlenosti žena kroz davanje poreskih olakšica za otvaranje novih radnih mesta za žene i za samozapošljavanje žena preduzetnica. 25 Tako mere fiskalne politike dobijaju i svoj osnov za korišćenje u borbi za ostvarivanje boljeg položaja žena u Republici Srbiji.…”

Contextualising Feminisms in the Nordic Region: Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Decolonial Critique

“…Many of the questions we discussed in the network were not unique to the Nordic region. It is, for example, difficult to claim that austerity politics in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis strengthened neoliberalism (Perugini et al 2019), and that rising trends of populism and nationalism are typical Nordic phenomena. We recognise resistance to feminism in the Nordic region today (e.g.…”