Main Article

Transfer
2017, Vol. 23(3) 313–332
Gender inequalities in the new ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1024258917713839
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Agnieszka Piasna
Senior Researcher, ETUI, Brussels, Belgium

Jan Drahokoupil
Senior Researcher, ETUI, Brussels, Belgium

Summary
Digitalisation, automation and technological change have brought about shifts in the occupational
structure, the place and the timing of work, and career patterns, putting a further strain on the
standard employment relationship. In the recent research on digitalisation, scant attention has
however been paid to the gender impact of these changes. This article addresses this gap by
developing a gender perspective on digitalisation, considering how these developments interact
with existing social inequalities and gender segregation patterns in the labour market. We identify
two broad areas in which digitalisation has thus far had a pronounced effect on employment: the
structure of employment (including occupational change and the task content of jobs) and forms of
work (including employment relationships and work organisation). We find that, despite the
profound changes in the labour market, traditional gender inequalities continue to reassert
themselves on many dimensions. With standard employment declining in significance, the policy
challenge is to include new forms of work in effective labour protection frameworks that promote
equal access of women and men to quality jobs and their equal treatment at work.

Résumé
La digitalisation, l’automatisation et le changement technologique ont entraı̂né des glissements
dans la structure de l’emploi, dans les lieux et les horaires de travail et dans les schémas de carrière
en ajoutant une pression supplémentaire sur les relations de travail standard. Toutefois, dans les
récentes recherches sur la digitalisation, l’impact en termes de genre de ces changements n’a que fort
peu retenu l’attention. Le présent article comble cette lacune en développant une perspective de genre
sur la digitalisation, en examinant comment ces évolutions interagissent avec les inégalités sociales
existantes et avec les modèles de ségrégation de genre sur le marché du travail. Nous identifions deux
domaines essentiels où la digitalisation a jusqu’à présent eu un impact prononcé sur l’emploi: la
structure de l’emploi (y compris les modifications professionnelles et le contenu des tâches des
emplois), et les formes du travail (en ce compris les relations d’emploi et l’organisation du travail). En

Corresponding author:
Agnieszka Piasna, European Trade Union Institute, Bd du Roi Albert II, 5, 1210 Brussels, Belgium.
Email: apiasna@etui.org
314 Transfer 23(3)

dépit des changements profonds que connaı̂t le marché du travail, nous constatons que les inégalités
traditionnelles entre les genres sont toujours bien présentes sous de nombreuses dimensions. Avec le
déclin des formes standard de l’emploi, le défi politique consiste à inclure les nouvelles formes de travail
dans des dispositifs efficaces de protection de la main-d’œuvre, qui favorisent un accès égal des femmes
et des hommes aux emplois de qualité et leur traitement égal au travail.

Zusammenfassung
Digitalisierung, Automatisierung und technologischer Wandel haben zu Veränderungen von
beruflichen Strukturen, Arbeitsplätzen und Arbeitszeiten sowie neuen beruflichen Werdegängen
geführt und die herkömmlichen Beschäftigungsverhältnisse massiv in Frage gestellt. Die jüngsten
Studien zum Thema Digitalisierung haben sich jedoch kaum mit den genderspezifischen Auswir-
kungen dieser Veränderungen befasst. Dieser Artikel schließt diese Lücke und entwickelt eine
Genderperspektive der Digitalisierung, indem er die Wechselwirkungen dieser Entwicklungen mit
bereits bestehenden sozialen Ungleichheiten und mit Mustern der Geschlechtersegregation im
Arbeitsmarkt untersucht. Wir benennen zwei große Bereiche, in denen die Digitalisierung bisher
deutliche Auswirkungen auf die Beschäftigung hatte: die Beschäftigungsstruktur (einschließlich
Berufswechsel und Arbeitsinhalten) und die Formen der Arbeit (einschließlich Beschäfti-
gungsverhältnissen und Arbeitsorganisation). Trotz grundlegender Veränderungen im Arbeits-
markt behaupten sich die Muster traditioneller genderbedingter Ungleichheiten in vielen
Dimensionen. Da die Bedeutung von normalen Beschäftigungsverhältnissen beständig abnimmt,
besteht die Herausforderung an die Politik darin, neue Arbeitsformen in einen effektiven Rahmen
der Beschäftigungssicherheit einzubinden und damit den Zugang von Männern und Frauen zu
Qualitätsarbeitsplätzen sowie ihre Gleichbehandlung bei der Arbeit zu sichern.

Keywords
Gender, employment, digitalisation, technological change, platform work, flexible employment,
labour market segmentation

Introduction
The world of work is undergoing radical transformation, in large part driven by digitalisation,
automation and technological change (see e.g. Autor, 2015; Frey and Osborne, 2013; Valenduc and
Vendramin, 2017). The change is seen in the occupational structure, the place and the timing of
work and career patterns, as well as a continuing decline in the standard employment relationship.
In recent research on digitalisation, its impact on various occupational groups has been empha-
sised, yet very limited attention is paid to how outcomes differ between women and men. This
article addresses this gap, considering the potential gender impact of digitalisation.
We argue that digitalisation, defined as the increasing integration of digital technologies in the
work process, can be best understood as the most recent phase of the long-term transformation of the
world of work through technological innovation (see Valenduc and Vendramin, 2017). It does not
constitute a radical break with the past and can only be partially disentangled from other processes
with which it interacts, such as population ageing, globalisation and economic liberalisation. More-
over, as emphasised by feminist scholarship, changing employment relations interact with enduring
gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work, with one shaping and, in turn, being shaped by the other
(Feldberg and Glenn, 1979; Gornick et al., 2009; Lewis, 1992; Vosko, 2000). To gain a better
understanding of the impact of digitalisation on gender relations and inequalities in the labour
Piasna and Drahokoupil 315

market, we identify two broad areas in which digitalisation has thus far had a pronounced effect on
employment: the structure of employment and the forms of work. We develop a gender perspective
on digitalisation around these two broad areas of change, considering how these developments
interact with existing social inequalities and gender segregation patterns in the labour market.
The first area of change connected to digitalisation is the structural transformation in employ-
ment in terms of shifts in the size of occupational categories and evolutions in the task content of
jobs. We draw on the theory of skill- or routine-biased technological change (see e.g. Autor, 2015)
which explains how the deployment of digital technologies changes labour demand by automating
certain jobs, while at the same time creating demand for new types of activities and skills. The
skill-bias hypothesis assumes that low-skilled workers will bear the brunt of the adjustment costs
(e.g. Arntz et al., 2016). More precisely, automation is routine-biased as it mainly affects jobs with
routine and hence automatable tasks, potentially affecting jobs involving a range of skill levels (de
la Rica and Gortazar, 2016; Graetz and Michaels, 2015). Non-automatable tasks involve inter-
personal contact and people skills, such as empathy, a feature of female-dominated personal
services and care sectors, as well as creativity and critical thinking, more often required in
male-dominated high-skilled professional jobs. Routine-biased technological change has driven
labour market polarisation, particularly in high-income countries, as jobs involving non-
automatable tasks tend to cluster in the lower and upper ends of the job hierarchy; however, it
has also interacted with other factors, particularly educational expansion, demographic change,
migration flows and changes in labour legislation (e.g. Hardy et al., 2016; Oesch, 2013; Salvatori,
2015). The impact of these changes on gender segregation is complex, with horizontal and vertical
segregation impacted differently, as also seen in the context of changing gender norms and gender
egalitarianism (Charles and Grusky, 2004; Estévez-Abe, 2005).
The second area of changes brought about by digitalisation includes the organisation of work
and forms of employment. Digital technologies allow a better coordination of workers across space
and time, enabling increasing reliance on flexible and non-standard work. For instance, matching
clients with workers to perform even the smallest tasks in a one-off transaction through digital
labour platforms is supporting the expansion of self-employment and other atypical forms of work
outside a (regulated) employment relationship (Drahokoupil and Fabo, 2016; see also Transfer
2/2017). Technology also promotes changes in work practices, such as increasing flexibility in the
place and timing of work. These developments are often linked to increasing employment pre-
cariousness and to risks related to an increasingly blurred boundary between work and non-work,
but are also expected to create new opportunities for achieving a better work-life balance and
increased labour market participation of marginalised groups of workers. We address these issues
from both a gender and a segmentation theory perspective, both of which see labour market
vulnerability, inter alia gender-related, as supporting and reinforcing placement of certain workers
in the secondary and more precarious labour market segments (Rubery, 1978; Rubery and Piasna,
2016). As a result, female employment might expand in the new digital economy due to the
continued existence of disadvantages (e.g. women are more likely to work in non-standard employ-
ment, with lower wages) which make women a more attractive (i.e. more flexible and cheaper)
source of labour. But this expansion will not necessarily lead to the creation of secure and
adequately paid employment (Leschke and Jepsen, 2011).
In the first two sections, we tackle the structural transformation of employment in Europe, the
first area of change, considering the changes in occupational structure and in the task content of
jobs. In the following two sections, we look at the second area of change, analysing the changing
forms of employment and work organisation. We conclude with some policy recommendations for
effective responses to the challenges and risks posed by digitalisation.
316 Transfer 23(3)

Occupational structure
To investigate the changing pattern of gender segregation, including gender differences in skill
use, we analyse patterns of net job growth and destruction in Europe between 2011 and 2015, the
first years of recovery following the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008. We use the ISCO occupation
classification, based on a hierarchy of tasks and duties performed in a job. We investigate the
extent to which changes in occupational structure impact male- and female-dominated segments
differently and the degree to which they challenge the current structure of occupational segmenta-
tion by gender. Though unable to separate the effects of technological change from other factors,
we assess the extent to which job creation and destruction in individual categories correspond to
the expectations of skill-biased technological change. The occupational analysis also allows us to
see the extent to which women have been able to upgrade to occupations involving higher skills.
In 2015, women represented 46 per cent of the EU workforce, an increase of just one percentage
point since 2008 and mainly reflecting the destruction of predominantly male-dominated jobs in
manufacturing and construction in the first period of the crisis. Despite austerity policies and cuts
in public sector employment, jobs in the female-dominated service sector (health care and edu-
cation) proved to be more resilient. Employment gains in 2011–2015 were then shared by men and
women relatively evenly (Eurofound, 2016b).
Changes in non-manual occupations (ISCO 1–5 in Figure 1) seem to correspond to the skill-
biased technological change, with several high-skilled professional occupations expanding and
clerical jobs (within ISCO 4) disappearing. Moreover, and apparently related to population ageing,
health-related jobs expanded both in higher- and medium-skilled categories. Reinforcing the
existing structure of gender segregation, these female-dominated sectors expanded mainly by
employing even more women.
At the top of the occupational spectrum, managers (in ISCO 1) recorded job losses (see Figure
1). These disproportionately affected men, thus driving up the share of female employment within
these male-dominated occupations. The majority of jobs added in production and specialised
services management, the only expanding managerial subcategory, went mostly to men. Moving
down the occupational hierarchy, changes in ISCO 2 subcategories conform to the expectations of
skill-biased technological change, with high-quality and skill-intensive jobs associated with the
knowledge-based economy expanding (i.e. science/engineering and ICT professionals). However,
the advancement of women in these categories is, at best, mixed, with both categories remaining
male-dominated (see gender breakdown in Table A1). Growing more dynamically than science/
engineering, the ICT professionals expanded mainly by employing even more men, with the share
of women declining slightly. By contrast, science and engineering professions grew by creating
jobs for women, while male employment dropped.
Job creation in the medium-skilled, non-health categories took place mainly by increasing
female employment, pushing up the share of women in these gender-mixed categories. At the
lower end of the skill spectrum in the non-manual categories, the destruction of female-
dominated jobs in the personal care category (within ISCO 5) is surprising in the light of the
expectations of the routine-biased theory. Interestingly, the personal service occupation (also
within ISCO 5, 61 per cent female in 2015) expanded mainly by adding men – another sign of
changing gender segregation.
In manual job categories (ISCO groups 7–9 in Figure 2), changes in male employment do not
correspond to skill-biased technological change, with significant male job creation in the blue-
collar categories. Moreover, much of the job destruction recorded in 2011–2015 was related to the
collapse of the construction sector in a number of EU countries after 2008. However, expansions in
317
–400
–200
0
200
400
600
800
1000

Chief executives, senior

officials and legislators
Administrative and commercial
managers
ISCO 1

Production and specialised

services managers
Hospitality, retail and other
services managers
Science and engineering
professionals
Health professionals
Teaching professionals
Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.
ISCO 2

Business and administration

professionals
Information and communications
technology professionals
Legal, social and cultural
professionals
Science and engineering
men 2011-15

Figure 1. Change in employment by gender, EU-28, 2011–2015, ISCO 1–5.

associate professionals
Health associate
professionals
Business and administration
women 2011-15

associate professionals

ISCO 3
Legal, social, cultural and related
associate professionals
Information and communications
technicians
General and keyboard clerks
Customer services clerks

ISCO 4
Numerical and material recording
clerks; Other clerical support
Personal service workers
Sales workers

ISCO 5
Personal care workers
Protective services workers
318
400
men 2011-15 women 2011-15

200

–200

–400

–600
Building and Metal, machinery Handicraft and Electrical and Food processing, Stationary plant Assemblers Drivers and Cleaners and Agricultural, Labourers in Food preparation Street and Refuse workers
related and related printing workers electronic wood working, and mobile plant helpers forestry mining, assistants related sales and other
trades workers trades workers trades workers garment and machine operators and fishery construction, and service elementary
other craft operators labourers manufacturing workers workers
workers and transport
ISCO 7 ISCO 8 ISCO 9

Figure 2. Change in employment by gender, EU-28, 2011–2015, ISCO 7–9.

Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.
Piasna and Drahokoupil 319

female-dominated service categories conform to the expectation of job creation at the lower end of
the occupational hierarchy.
More specifically, male job destruction in some male-dominated categories (builders, metal and
machinery workers, drivers, and miners) was accompanied by job creation in other male-
dominated segments (electrical and electronics workers) or male job creation in the more
gender-balanced occupation of assemblers. By contrast, blue-collar women were less affected
by job destruction. Agricultural labourers represented an exception here, as this male-dominated
category adjusted by reducing female employment. Cleaners and helpers and food preparation
assistants were the two female-dominated low-skill categories that recorded net job creation,
corresponding to skill-biased technological change. Moreover, they showed signs of structural
change challenging gender segregation: the female-dominated food preparation occupation
expanded by adding similar numbers of men and women.1
In general, the transformation of the occupational structure in the EU between 2011 and 2015 did
not seem to benefit categories dominated by one gender: there is only a weak relationship between the
share of women and job growth across 37 occupational categories, r ¼ 0.187, p ¼ 0.268 (as listed in
Table A1). In fact, some of the sectors adding most jobs exhibited a balanced gender profile. At the
same time, there are signs of upgrading in the female occupational structure, with the share of
women in high-skilled occupations, both in female-dominated professional groups (within ISCO
2) and male-dominated manual occupations (craft and related crafts workers, ISCO 7), increasing.
By contrast, the share of women in some low-skilled categories (sales, personal services and care
in ISCO 5) and elementary occupations (ISCO 9) declined (see Table A1).
However, none of these developments signal a major break with the traditional division between
‘female’ and ‘male’ jobs. Female-dominated segments still constituted the main drivers of female job
growth. In particular, health care and education remained the main sources of female employment, as
well as the main drivers of job growth among women after 2011, thereby contributing to growing
segregation as the share of women further increased in these most female-dominated sectors (Euro-
found, 2016b). On the other hand, there were signs of a possible transformation of gender employ-
ment patterns across several occupational categories that added new jobs in the period 2011–2015.
The shift in gender segregation was most pronounced in the female-dominated food preparation and
personal services segments, contributing significantly to male employment growth, as well as in the
male-dominated science and engineering segments, where female employment grew.

The task content of jobs

The risk of a job being automated should be linked to the tasks performed within the job (Arntz
et al., 2016; Autor, 2015; Autor et al., 2003). Digitalisation can be expected to impact men and
women differently due to gender differences in the task content of jobs, even within the same
occupations. However, there is no systematic international comparative evidence on the interaction
of gender and the risk of a job being automated.2 Keister and Lewandowski’s analysis (2017) of the
expansion of routine work in Eastern Europe identifies two clearly gendered groups of workers

1 Eurofound (2016b) observed that personal service workers in the food and beverage sector (the bottom
quintile of income distribution) were the fastest growing sector, with 200,000 jobs added between 2011
and 2015, equally divided between men and women.
2 Arntz et al. (2016) include a gender dummy in their model (showing a small negative effect of being
female on the risk of job automation), but they do not offer a gender-sensitive analysis of different risk
profiles for men and women (i.e. an interaction of gender and other factors).
320 Transfer 23(3)

performing routine work. The first group consists of manufacturing workers, mostly male, with
secondary education and wages in the middle of the distribution. The other one comprises service
workers, mostly women, with secondary education and earning low wages. These two routine
occupations match the vulnerable job categories also identified in high-income countries (Ace-
moglu and Autor, 2011; Goos et al., 2014).
To assess the extent to which women and men across Europe are exposed differently to the risk
of automation, we identify the gender gap in the intensity of repetitive and complex tasks as well as
on-the-job learning. Repetitive tasks are used as a proxy for routine tasks. We rely on information
reported in the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. Table 1 shows these differences along
the occupational hierarchy, using the broad ISCO occupational categories for the EU-28. The
analysis indicates that women across most occupational categories were more likely to perform
repetitive and routine tasks and less likely to perform complex ones. In general, women thus appear
to be more at risk of being pushed out by robots and algorithms. The differences are most
pronounced in manual categories (ISCO 7–8 in particular), though the gender gaps in non-
manual categories are also significant. On average, women were also less likely to upgrade their
skills on the job (i.e. workers reporting ‘learning new things’). However, the differences in most
categories were smaller than the gender gaps in repetitive and complex task intensity. Finally,
clerical support workers (ISCO 4) stand out: the skill intensity gender gap appears smaller in this
category and women reported more on-the-job learning than men.
However, the static analysis in Table 1 cannot capture possible changes in task content over
time. It is likely that the structural changes identified in the previous section will result in an
upgrading of tasks performed by women. That would be consistent with evidence from Germany
and the US showing that, while women tend to work in jobs with a higher intensity of routine-
cognitive tasks, they exhibit a faster growth in the share of non-routine, analytic and inter-personal
tasks (Autor and Price, 2013; Black and Spitz-Oener, 2010). The current division of tasks thus
renders women more vulnerable to automation, but trends point to a narrowing of the gender gap
through upgrading.

Forms of employment
Along with the changes in the structure of employment and the task content of jobs, an important aspect
of work subject to change pressure due to digitalisation is the employment relationship itself. The
decline in the standard employment relationship (a statistical norm and point of reference in much of
employment regulation) has been underway for decades, paralleled by a rising precariousness of work.
Digitalisation has accentuated these processes, bringing about the increasing fragmentation of the
employment relationship (Rubery, 2015). With outsourcing, offshoring and the use of online platforms
as an intermediary between worker and employer, the traditional employment relationship is shifting
towards a complex and multi-faceted network of relations between ‘independent contractors’, clients
and intermediaries (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2014). Not only are ‘jobs for life’ disappearing,
but also work for a single employer is being substituted by ‘portfolio careers’.
Despite the gradual dismantling of standard employment with its deeply gendered version of
labour protection, the rising precariousness of employment is traditionally also highly gendered
(e.g. Rubery, 2011; Vosko, 2000). The gender bias has proven very resilient in spite of the dramatic
transformation of employment systems over the last few decades, amplified in the aftermath of the
2008 crisis by the recession and austerity policies with an unequal gender impact (see e.g.
Karamessini and Rubery, 2013). Although available empirical evidence remains inconclusive as
to the overall gender balance among workers in the platform economy (e.g. Berg, 2016; Huws
 Table 1. Task content of jobs by gender and occupation, EU-28, 2015.

Repetitive hand or arm Short repetitive tasks of less Short repetitive tasks of less
movements than 1 minute than 10 minutes Complex tasks Learning new things

gender gap gender gap gender gap gender gap gender gap
men women W-M men women W-M men women W-M men women W-M men women W-M

Managers 28.5% 37.2% 8.7 19.3% 17.5% 1.8 28.6% 30.6% 2.0 77.2% 67.6% 9.6 84.9% 82.3% 2.6
Professionals 32.5% 29.2% 3.4 13.6% 16.5% 2.9 24.8% 29.2% 4.4 84.2% 79.4% 4.7 90.7% 90.7% 0.0
Technicians and 28.0% 36.0% 7.9 16.6% 19.5% 2.9 30.4% 40.2% 9.8 78.9% 73.1% 5.8 86.2% 84.6% 1.7
associate
professionals
Clerical support 40.0% 47.2% 7.3 25.9% 25.2% 0.7 44.9% 45.2% 0.3 62.7% 65.5% 2.8 69.8% 75.4% 5.6
workers
Service and sales 32.3% 40.1% 7.8 27.8% 30.2% 2.4 44.5% 44.7% 0.2 48.6% 41.6% 7.0 63.4% 63.3% 0.1
workers
Craft and 51.6% 69.4% 17.8 30.7% 35.8% 5.1 49.2% 60.3% 11.1 75.1% 53.9% 21.2 75.1% 68.9% 6.2
related trades
workers
Plant and 55.1% 72.6% 17.5 26.1% 46.1% 20.0 49.1% 59.4% 10.2 48.5% 38.2% 10.3 53.2% 52.9% 0.3
machine
operators,
and
assemblers
Elementary 51.7% 55.6% 3.9 28.9% 37.8% 8.9 51.2% 55.2% 4.0 36.5% 26.5% 10.0 48.1% 30.2% 18.0
occupations
Sources: European Working Conditions Survey (Eurofound), own calculations.

321
322 Transfer 23(3)

et al., 2016; Ipeirotis, 2010),3 the recent increase in the fragmentation of work appears to affect
women more than men. One measure of this development is the holding of multiple jobs, espe-
cially if this involves juggling self-employment without employees (hereafter solo self-employ-
ment) with other forms of employment, or multi-employer work as an own-account worker. Such a
situation is probably the closest reflection of work in multiple ‘gigs’ in the digital economy and
through crowdsourcing platforms, even if it admittedly also includes traditional jobs not related to
the use of new technology. The solo self-employment is among the most precarious forms of work,
particularly among women, as it is associated with low income, inadequate, if any, benefits, lack of
representation and high job insecurity (Wall, 2015).
As illustrated in Figure 3, holding multiple jobs was traditionally more frequent among men.
But over the period 2002–2015, a much steeper increase was noted among women. As a result, the
gender gap considerably narrowed, with 4.42 million men and 4.28 million women having more
than one job in the EU in 2015. This increase in multiple jobs was particularly visible among
employees who were solo self-employed in their second job. This category increased by 45 per
cent over the analysed period among women, while it remained stable among men. Similarly, an
increasing number of women whose primary employment status was solo self-employment
reported having more than one job. Among women, the group juggling more than one
own-account work increased by 72 per cent between 2002 and 2015, with a visible acceleration
of this trend between 2010 and 2015. Though this group was still bigger among men, the overall
increase here was much slower (19 per cent between 2002 and 2015). Fragmentation of careers is
thus more intense among women, and they are ‘catching up’ with men in particular in juggling
fragmented ‘gigs’, i.e. multiple self-employed jobs.
Moreover, fragmentation of work among women increasingly affects high-skilled profession-
als. Between 2002 and 2015, the incidence of women holding multiple jobs increased most among
professionals, technicians and associate professionals, and to a smaller degree also among clerks
and manual high-skilled workers (Figure 4). The expansion among professionals becomes even
more remarkable considering the overall growth of this occupational group (Figure 5). Thus,
between 2002 and 2015, the number of professionals, technicians and associate professionals
having more than one job increased by 456,600 among men and by a striking 704,400 among
women in the EU-28. While this is consistent with the findings that workers engaged in new forms
of work linked to digitalisation are better skilled and better educated than the average worker in a
respective country (Codagnone et al., 2016), the increase of multiple job holders among a more
task-routine job category of service and sales workers provides some evidence of increasingly
fragmented careers among groups more at risk of being negatively affected by digitalisation.
One consequence of work fragmentation is the growing risk of deepening gender-related
workforce segmentation because of differences in women’s position, relative to men, in the
occupational structure, the family and welfare policy, all of which render them more vulnerable
to market pressures (Rubery, 2013). Fragmentation adds to the constant competitive pressures
exerted on workers by employing organisations, with competition for work no longer subject to

3 Among platform workers, gender balance differs depending on the country and the type of work per-
formed. Individuals working for MTurk in the US were found to be mostly female (70 per cent) by
Ipeirotis (2010), but a study carried out several years later by the ILO (Berg, 2016) revealed a gender
balance, with 48 per cent of MTurkers being women. Among the few EU countries for which data on
crowdwork are available, this type of work seems to be performed somewhat more often by men, with the
share of women ranging from 38 per cent in Sweden and Germany, 41 per cent in Austria, 44 per cent in
the Netherlands to 52 per cent in the UK (Huws et al., 2016).
Piasna and Drahokoupil 323

Employees, by type of a second job

3,000

2,500 women, employees

2,000 men, employees

1,500 men, solo self-employed

1,000 women, solo self-employed

500

0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Solo self-employed, by type of a second job

400

350

men, solo self-employed

300

250
men, employees

200
women, employees

150
women, solo self-employed
100

50

0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Figure 3. Working in more than one job, by gender and employment status in main and other paid job(s) (in
thousands), EU-28, 2002–2015.
Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.

any geographical constraints. Workers compete with a growing precarious workforce, for var-
ious reasons compelled to take up low paying and unstable jobs (Graham et al., 2017). Without
regulations setting minimum employment standards, such a situation leads to deteriorating
working conditions and increased segmentation (Cappelli et al., 1997; Rubery and Piasna,
2016). While it can be argued that such downward pressure on labour standards will apply across
the entire workforce engaged in new forms of work, gender differences are likely to be repro-
duced because of women’s more vulnerable position vis-à-vis employers (Rubery, 2007; Vosko
et al., 2009). This means that the organisation of social reproduction in a society is key to
understanding the gendering of precarious employment and the constraints forcing women to
324 Transfer 23(3)

Men Women
7% 7%

6% 6%

5% 5%

4% 4%

3% 3%

2% 2%

1% 1%

0% 0%

2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

Professionals, technicians and Service and sales workers

associate professionals Manual skilled workers
Clerical support workers
Elementary occupations

Figure 4. Employed persons having a second job by gender and occupation in first job (as a % of occupational
category), EU-28, 2002–2015.
Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.

enter such forms of work (O’Reilly and Fagan, 1998; O’Reilly and Spee, 1998; Rubery and
Fagan, 1995).
Nevertheless, non-standard forms of employment are often expected to benefit women more
than men and thus contribute to levelling gender inequality in the labour market. Such expecta-
tions, however, acknowledge an unequal position of women in the labour force and in households,
but fail to question it. For instance, women, especially those with care obligations, are believed to
benefit from working fragmented gigs, insofar as such flexible work offers the possibility of
combining it with unpaid work and opens up opportunities to those weakly attached to the labour
market to find paid work (Eurofound, 2015; Eurofound and the International Labour Office, 2017).
Nevertheless, the predictability and inflexibility of care provision (see e.g. Golden, 2005) is hardly
compatible with precariousness in employment and unsteady workflow. Indeed, in the EU-28,
women more often than men reported that they worked in temporary jobs because they could not
find a permanent position (63.6 per cent of women and 61.6 per cent of men, Eurostat, data for
2015). Short hours of work also do not seem to fit well with women’s preferences and needs as in
2015, 25.7 per cent of women working part-time reported they would rather work in full-time jobs,
up from 23.6 per cent in 2008 (in EU-28, Eurostat).
An important risk posed by the new forms of work in the digital economy is that for the most
part they are not covered by traditional labour and social protections. In some cases, such protec-
tions are considered impractical or even unnecessary, based on the assumption that work offered
through platforms might indeed be precarious, but not the workers who perform it as they rely on
other sources of income or because they have a preference for high job flexibility (see discussion in
Campbell and Price, 2016). However questionable in the first place, such claims also find little
support in the existing empirical evidence. For instance, a recent survey of adults working via
online platforms in the UK revealed that as many as 81 per cent are main breadwinners in their
households and, for nearly one in three, platform work constitutes the main source of income
Piasna and Drahokoupil 325

Men Women
2,000 2,000

1,500 1,500

1,000 1,000

500 500

0 0

2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

Professionals, technicians and Service and sales workers

associate professionals Manual skilled workers
Clerical support workers
Elementary occupations

Figure 5. Employed persons having a second job by gender and occupation in first job (in thousands), EU-28,
2002–2015.
Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.

(Huws and Joyce, 2016). Accordingly, the most often reported reason for engaging in such work is
a need to earn money, along with a necessity to work from home due to care obligations (Berg,
2016).
Social protection systems are rarely adapted to non-linear and unstable career patterns, as
experienced by women due to their unequal share of unpaid care work (Leschke and Jepsen,
2011). Insecure, fragmented and often informal forms of work, such as those the digital economy
is creating, can be expected further to worsen access to social protection, as well as undermine its
fiscal support and endanger the sustainability of social protection systems. This will have
particularly negative consequences for women due to their greater reliance on social protection
across the life course. Women are also in a more precarious position when they become unem-
ployed, exerting additional pressure to accept any work such as low wage and unstable jobs
offered through platforms.
Similarly, a lack of collective representation and institutionalised wage setting in new forms of
work can be expected to affect negatively women’s earnings, as they were found to be less likely to
bargain for pay on an individual basis (Graham et al., 2017; Rubery, 2011). This creates a vicious
cycle of growing disadvantage and labour market segmentation.
Finally, the employer becomes ‘invisible’ to the worker when the contact between the two
parties can be mediated by the Internet platform or suppliers (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft,
2014; Graham et al., 2017; Marchington et al., 2005). This could potentially lead to less gender-
based discrimination, as the Internet affords anonymity and employers using algorithms to select
workers can be expected to hire rationally on the basis of information on skills or past performance.
However, research on online labour markets revealed that gender stereotypes play a role in the
observed discrimination in hiring decisions regarding types of work and contracts for women
(Silberzahn et al., 2014; Uhlmann and Silberzahn, 2014). Moreover, the requirement of constant
326 Transfer 23(3)

availability and instantaneous responsiveness can discriminate against workers who juggle online
work with other activities, most notably care (i.e. mainly women). Rejecting work might have a
major detrimental effect on employment opportunities on a particular platform, for instance lead-
ing to the termination or suspension of the accounts of workers who rejected assignments (Berg,
2016; De Stefano, 2016).
Little in terms of a positive impact of digitalisation on gender equality can thus be expected
when taking into account the increasing precariousness of new forms of work, characterised by
more employer-led flexibility and atypical employment (Wajcman, 2004).

Work organisation
In addition to the transformation of forms of employment, recent technology-enabled innovations,
including the widespread use of ICT, emails or outsourcing, are linked to changes in the organisa-
tion of work (Drahokoupil, 2015; Huws, 2013). There has been an erosion of formal rules govern-
ing work, including those related to place and time, and the boundary between work and non-work
activities is now in a state of dissolution. These changes have important implications for gender
equality, as women’s position in the labour market is to a great extent shaped by their dual role as
workers and carers – a role that puts constraints on their labour market availability both in terms of
time and place.
Understanding why gender inequalities persist in the labour market allows us to formulate
expectations as to the impact of digitalisation and technological change on women’s position in
employment. One important issue is the gendered division of housework and care activities, which
are unpaid and undervalued, but also never completed (Wajcman, 2008). Women remain respon-
sible for the bulk of unpaid work (Eurofound, 2016a), constraining the extent and timing of their
availability for paid work. As a result, men’s and women’s work is valued differently by employ-
ers, and the greater availability of men to work longer hours and overtime increases their propen-
sity to receive higher wages. Thus, the limited time availability of women for paid work negatively
affects their bargaining position vis-à-vis employers (Huws, 2012). The requirement of constant
availability has not been eased by digitalisation; quite the contrary. As shown by Berg (2016),
digital platform workers spend long hours waiting and looking for work, and once they find a task
they generally must be available to execute it straightaway.
Among the new occupations booming in the digital economy, IT work generates great hope, not
only in relation to its growth but also to flexibility and autonomy for self-managed workers (Baldry
et al., 2007). However, in Europe, as in the US, women are significantly underrepresented among
IT experts in knowledge-intensive services, in contrast to their representation among highly skilled
professionals in general (Legault and Chasserio, 2012). At the policy level, the issue has mainly
been viewed from the labour supply side, with a lack of adequately trained women and their low
share among Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students seen as a key driver of
segregation (European Commission, 2015). The demand side is hardly mentioned. And yet, the
huge dropout rate of women in these professions along the career path suggests that organisation of
work deters women from pursuing careers in science and technology jobs (Valenduc, 2011).
Existing studies point to problems such as long hours of unplanned and unpaid overtime, tight
control by management and high job insecurity (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, 2013; Holt-
grewe, 2014; Legault and Chasserio, 2012). Moreover, the unavailability of part-time work to
accommodate family commitments and restrictions on the use of maternity leave constitute major
forms of discrimination against women (Hunter, 2006). Thus, pursuing a career in high-tech
occupations poses an additional challenge for women who not only have to obtain suitable training
Piasna and Drahokoupil 327

but also deal with post-educational labour market forces that men are not exposed to. Not surpris-
ingly, education plays a much smaller role in occupational matching in science and technology
jobs for women than for men (Srinivas, 2011). This leaves little hope that further technological
progress and upskilling alone will have a positive impact on gender equality in such male-
dominated workplaces and work cultures. Instead, in line with the postulates of segmentation
theory, the role of practice at the workplace and organisational level should be recognised as
perpetuating gender-related labour market segmentation.
Another major change in work organisation involves the blurring of the concept of a traditional
workplace, with workers able to perform their work anywhere as long as they have access to a
computer with an Internet connection. Some expect a liberating and democratising effect of such
work arrangements on gender relations and a way to increase women’s labour market participation.
Additionally, home-based work is approached as a work-life balance-enhancing solution, benefit-
ing women in particular (Eurofound and the International Labour Office, 2017). In a similar vein,
the EU-level strategy for gender equality emphasises the promotion of female entrepreneurship
(European Commission, 2015), despite a recognition by the European Parliament that ‘among the
various occupational categories, the self-employed and businesswomen in particular are having
great difficulty in achieving a work-life balance’ (2016: 8).
Here again, we find little support for the positive expectations attached to home-based work in
available empirical evidence. Looking first at the self-employed, home-based workers were found
to work irregular hours that erode work-home boundaries – an effect that persists for workers at all
skill levels (Baines and Gelder, 2003; Gold and Mustafa, 2013). Insecurity of work with uncertain
workflows and a need to react promptly to clients’ requests, all features of contemporary platform
work, further intensify the spillover of work into family life. This, if anything, is only aggravated
by mobile communication technologies and online work that allow for, or more often require,
perpetual contact (Berg, 2016). Turning to teleworking women, studies show that time saved on
commuting to work tends to be allocated to caring or housework, with the traditional gendered
division of household labour reproduced rather than challenged by new ways of working (Hil-
brecht et al., 2008). Moreover, as argued by Wajcman (2008), a tendency to perform more tasks
simultaneously within a given period of time or multi-tasking differs by gender. Accordingly, there
are gender differences in the quality of leisure time, with men tending to enjoy more uninterrupted
spells of leisure activities, while women’s time is more fragmented and accompanied by a second
activity, often a combination of leisure and unpaid (care) work. This might imply gender-specific
implications of online home-based labour, with a higher risk of time squeeze and a negative work-
life spillover for women.

Conclusions
Technological change, interacting with other factors such as population ageing, has brought about
profound changes in the labour market, but the traditional gender inequalities continue to reassert
themselves in the new world of work. To begin with, there is a considerable degree of continuity in
gender employment segregation in the EU, with female-dominated segments, such as health care
and lower-level services, constituting the main job creation drivers for women. However, there are
some signs of change, with men entering female-dominated categories at the lower end of job
hierarchy, and jobs for women being created in the skill-intensive job categories. The latter
suggests that the trends may lead to a more equal form of female labour market integration. On
the other hand, the analysis of the task content of jobs reveals that women are more at risk of
328 Transfer 23(3)

automation as they tend to perform routine tasks more often than men, even within the same
occupational category.
Furthermore, a gender-sensitive analysis of the forms of female labour market participation
reveals that an apparent advance of women on the labour market may in fact go hand in hand with a
reproduction, or even worsening, of gender inequalities both in the workplace and in the house-
hold. For instance, the requirement of constant availability and instantaneous responsiveness
discriminates against workers who juggle online work with other activities, most notably care.
Flexible work practices, such as working from home, may boost the unequal division of unpaid
work, as well as further weakening women’s bargaining position vis-à-vis employers. Thus,
increased work flexibility and fragmentation is expected to worsen further the position of women
in employment and to exacerbate – rather than alleviate – existing inequalities.
Gender relations in new forms of work and employment interact with the old inequalities in the
workplace linked to gender discrimination and the unequal division of caring responsibilities and
housework (see Cranford et al., 2003). As long as technological change leaves social relations of
gender unchanged, a continuity and reproduction of gender inequalities is to be expected. Public
policies addressing the underlying sources of gender discrimination, such as the availability of
affordable child care, support for equal participation in care activities, or working time regulations
promoting work-life balance, are thus a necessary prerequisite for harnessing the positive potential
of the new world of work. Flexible forms of work may be an opportunity for combining work and
care responsibilities, but a strong legal framework is needed to guarantee that such work offers
good working conditions and pay. Moreover, existing policies promoting equal treatment at the
workplace (anti-discrimination legislation) and allowing for combining work and caring respon-
sibilities (working time regulations) are linked to standard and protected forms of employment.
With the declining significance of standard employment, the challenge is to include new forms of
work in effective labour protection, promoting the equal access of women and men to quality jobs
and their equal treatment at work.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Appendix
Table A1. Change in employment and gender composition by detailed occupation, EU-28, 2011–2015.

Female, Employment change

Female change in 000s
(%) in p.p. (%)
ISCO 08 Men Women
1-digit ISCO 08 2-digit 2011 2011–15 2011–2015 2011–2015

1 Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 25.0 1.0 128.2 22.0
Administrative and commercial managers 38.4 0.8 337.6 166.0
Production and specialised services managers 28.1 0.9 594.8 169.8
Hospitality, retail and other services managers 37.3 0.5 121.4 43.5
2 Science and engineering professionals 23.5 3.0 0.1 265.3
Health professionals 68.0 1.4 46.1 380.0
Teaching professionals 70.5 0.1 13.0 49.7
Business and administration professionals 47.2 1.8 642.8 851.0
Information and communications technology 15.6 0.2 427.4 87.6
professionals
Legal, social and cultural professionals 53.8 2.3 54.5 356.2
3 Science and engineering associate professionals 15.6 0.7 108.0 43.9
Health associate professionals 79.2 0.2 153.0 515.0
Business and administration associate 55.9 0.2 49.1 12.5
professionals
Legal, social, cultural and related associate 60.7 1.1 353.0 675.2
professionals
Information and communications technicians 17.8 0.9 143.2 11.8
4 General and keyboard clerks 79.0 1.5 207.2 295.8
Customer services clerks 71.0 0.8 114.2 149.9
Numerical and material recording clerks 52.4 2.7 343.2 791.2
Other clerical support workers 66.3 4.0 222.6 740.0
5 Personal service workers 60.6 2.1 399.9 74.4
Sales workers 66.6 0.1 119.2 179.8
Personal care workers 89.1 0.5 7.8 255.0
Protective services workers 14.0 0.9 47.0 28.6
7 Building and related trades workers 2.0 0.5 550.2 35.0
Metal, machinery and related trades workers 3.8 0.2 151.5 15.0
Handicraft and printing workers 29.7 0.5 16.5 2.5
Electrical and electronic trades workers 3.4 0.2 208.4 14.9
Food processing, wood working, garment and 38.2 0.2 4.2 18.7
other craft and related trades workers
8 Stationary plant and machine operators 31.9 1.4 19.3 102.3
Assemblers 40.9 3.7 142.0 12.8
Drivers and mobile plant operators 4.3 0.0 133.1 7.2
9 Cleaners and helpers 84.8 0.3 74.7 259.6
Agricultural, forestry and fishery labourers 37.0 5.0 31.4 116.8
Labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing 27.2 0.1 282.3 112.0
and transport
Food preparation assistants 71.7 3.5 136.1 130.3
Street and related sales and service workers 28.2 0.3 9.3 4.7
Refuse workers and other elementary workers 33.9 1.3 196.1 53.5

Sources: Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), own calculations.