Women in the Polish Labour Market: Is Transition a Threat?

Women's Employment in Transition, 1992–4: the Case of Poland

“…On a more positive note, however, Ingham et al (1998) have provided some evidence from the 1992-5 period which indicates, in what may appear a contradiction with the aforementioned women's unemployment figures, that the labour market for women may be more buoyant than previously thought. They have shown that women are less likely to enter the unemployment pool than men suggesting that the probability of them losing their jobs is lower, and that a considerably higher proportion of them are re-entrants to the labour market than men.…”

“…A popular explanation for this was the availability of very generous maternity leave, during which time women were officially still part of the labour force (Gregory et al 1995), 1 and the availability of inexpensive day-care facilities. Other explanations (see Ingham et al 1998) suggest that the extended family offered considerable support and that compatibility between work and family was eased by their concentration within the family farming sector and the crowding of women into professions such as primary school teaching where hours were more convenient for mothers.…”

“…According to these authors, women are also more likely to be first-time entrants to the labour market than men. Ingham et al (1998) suggest, in fact, that women have been protected to some extent from job insecurity by their concentration in core professional services such as education and health which, despite their contraction, have neither declared mass redundancies nor been privatized. The contradiction implied by these figures can be explained to some extent by evidence that many women, both registered and unregistered as unemployed, work in the black economy, albeit probably because they cannot find any formal employment, and that female unemployment rates may be overstated.…”

“…Self-employment is clearly playing a key role in relieving unemployment among women (see Lisowska 1996), although there is some argument over which groups of women are benefiting from it. On the one hand some surveys (see Karwinska 1995;Lisowska 1996) suggest that it is mostly well-educated middleaged women (35-49 years) who cannot find work who are benefiting, while analysis of official statistics suggests that self-employment is acting primarily as a refuge for women who status, 1994 (%) are, in the main, poorly educated (see Ingham et al 1998).…”

“…The family's pre-transition functioning is also called into question by the withdrawal of state family-related benefits and by recessionary conditions which are likely to result in more self-reliance and to continue to make female participation in the labour market a financial necessity (Kurzynowski 1994). Against this backdrop it could be argued that women, given their high educational levels compared with men and their dominance of white collar jobs, are in a good position to take advantage of new jobs in the expanding service sector (see the arguments of Ingham et al 1998). Their position may also improve if they maintain their dominance in previously under-valued professions such as accountancy, the law, medicine, dentistry and pharmacy which, as in the West, may come to attract more power and income.…”