Discrimination of Women at Work
‘Women’s employment: Shaky or a done deal’
About two years ago, my quest for a Master’s thesis topic began. Encouraged by my peers, parents and friends, I became interested in female labour market participation. Although European women’s involvement in paid labour has now been recognized for several decades, feminists argue that the conditions in which women are being employed still leave much to be desired. As I consider myself to be both a proud member of the female sex and a rather ambitious ‘career hunter’ as I would phrase it, I decided to devote my thesis to this issue.
Equality and discrimination are of pivotal importance when discussing women’s rights. These two concepts however very often get mixed up or even worse - misunderstood. In the first part of my thesis, I have attempted to dispel some of the existing ambiguities. Firstly, equality and discrimination are defined and placed within their proper context. The two subsequent sections demonstrate that discrimination is a tricky concept that can take on several forms. In principle, discrimination against women is legally prohibited. This is not necessarily borne out by the “facts of life and reality”, as is shown in the fourth section. In the first part’s final section, the readers are introduced to the controversial notion of affirmative or positive action.
Part two elaborates on the legal regimes of relevance for female employment. Due to the imposed agenda, I had to restrict myself to two international and two regional regimes. I included the little-known Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women because it is the core United Nations treaty on women’s rights. The International Labour Organization serves as the second international regime. Since my thesis specifically targets European women, the choice for the European Union and the Revised European Social Charter as regional regimes was quite obvious.
Part three of my thesis is undoubtedly also the most important part. Throughout the years, feminists have identified a list of specific work-related issues. Part three tackles most of these issues from a comparative perspective. Included are job opportunities, the pay gap, sexual harassment, part-time work, pregnancy, parental leave and child-care services.
During the first months of the project, my mindset was rather positive. I (naively?) assumed that many of the feminist findings were exaggerated. The more I progressed however, the more this optimism gave way to disappointment. Multiple sources indicate that disturbing practices and trends still persist. The average female worker still earns less than her male counterpart. Women are the primary victims of sexual harassment at work. Female employees are dismissed more often than their male colleagues. Women are underrepresented in positions of authority and responsibility. Career interruption or termination in order to care for young children is still something which is considered mainly by mothers, not by their male partners. Each of the four above-mentioned legal regimes established sets of rules to address trends and practices that are detrimental to women’s employment but the results have so far been mixed. Adverse treatment of female workers continues to be attributable to lasting stereotypes about a woman’s role and place in society. In some cases, the legal regimes successfully battle those stereotypes. In other cases though, it becomes uncomfortably clear that legal provisions alone do not have enough clout or that they even perpetuate detrimental stereotypes.
In conclusion, the sad truth appears to be that - quoting the words of the successful academic Anne-Marie Slaughter - “European women still can’t have it all”.
