Employment
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3
Employment
The need to focus on the p articipation of migra nt women
in the labour mar ket is highlighted in the 2016 integra-
tion action pla n of the European Commission.61 In 2015,
the European Economic and Social Committee issued
an own initiative opin ion on the inclusion of immigran t
women in the labou r market,62 which highlights that
they represent acurrently under-utilised source of
skills and creativit y. The committee calls on M ember
States to “adopt policies that ta ke account of women’s
specific situation, their qualifications, knowledge of the
language of the hos t country and whe ther they are
first- or subsequent generation immigrants”. Further-
more, the committee ca lls for “better statistics, b roken
down by gender and natio nality or orig in, at both the
national and Europea n levels”. Such data, disaggregated
by gender, age, ethnic origi n and nationality, residence
status, etc., was collec ted by EU-MIDISII. It can support
the development of relev ant EU and national p olicies
to improve the employment si tuation of immigr ant
women, as well as of women of im migrant descent.
In the EU, according to the OECD, imm igrant women are
ten times more likely to work as d omestic workers than
their native peers,63 although this result is influenced
by southern European countries, where the proportion
of immigrant women p roviding services to households
often exceeds 20% . The OECD report al so highlights
the high share of immig rant women (25%) in menial
jobs, compared to 9% of native-born im migrant women
and 15% of immigrant m en.64
Women who come to the EU as spous es, under fam-
ily reunification arrangements, may face significant
delays before they are allowed to wor k. During that
61 European Comm ission (2016a), p. 9.
62 European Economic a nd Social Committe e (2015).
63 OECD (2018), p. 164.
64 Ibid.
time they are financia lly dependent and legally tied to
their husbands, with potentially serious consequences
for their legal stat us if the marriage ends.65 If they have
limited knowledg e of the country’s language they will
be more likely to have difficul ties interacting with peo-
ple outside their community. The EU could therefore
consider reviewing the Di rective on Family Reunifi ca-
tion to allow spouses to wor k immediately af ter their
arrival in the EU.
3.1. Employment rates
Overall EU-MIDISII results s how large gender gaps, with
fewer women engaged in pa id work66 than men in most
cases (Figure 5). No ge nder gap is recorded by respond-
ents of Turkish origin in Swed en. Asmall gap (3 percent-
age points) is found amo ng respondents of Sub-Saharan
origin in Germany, Luxemburg and the United Kingdom.
In Cyprus, slightly more wome n (84%) than men (81%)
are in paid work among res pondents of south A sian
origin. Among respondents of Sub-Saharan origin, in
two countries – Austria and Port ugal– the prop ortion
of women in paid work is hig her than that of men (20
and 8 percentage point s, respectively). Except for in
65 Fo r example, see the UK Government’s webpage; and The
Independent, “Home Office ‘h elping abusive par tners by
producing fo rms making it easier to t hreaten spouses with
deportation’”, 8 January 2016.
66 The ‘paid work r ate’ was calculated in E U-MIDIS II based on
the self-declared current main activity. If the main activity
was indicate d as ‘inactive’ or ‘unpa id’, the person was asked
if they “did any work in t he last four weeks to ear n some
money”. This que stion aimed to also ca pture informal work
and miscella neous jobs that may contr ibute to afamily’s
income. This ca lculation of paid wor k rate is not fully
comparabl e to the ILO concept used by Eurost at, where those
employed are de fined as persons 15 years o r older who have
worked for at leas t one hour for pay or profit or f amily gain
during the ref erence week or persons wh o were not at work
during the ref erence week but had ajob or bu siness from
which they were temporarily absent.
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