Women with low skills have fewer opportunities in the EU labour market

Today’s job market is constantly increasing requirements on competencies across all sectors. This poses a major challenge for the 64 million women and men with low levels of education in Member States. They are more often unemployed or completely out of the labour market, compared to people with middle and high levels of education.

The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has launched its research note on gender, skills and precarious jobs. It explores the potential for upscaling skills among women and men in the EU labour market, with a focus on people with low qualifications in precarious employment.

It described how the research note looks into the skills required in the current and future labour market due to the recurring changes in our society driven by globalisation and technological advances. The research note was prepared at the request of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU (2017).

The EIGE found that women with low qualifications find it especially hard to access jobs with decent pay. Only 42% of low qualified women are employed and almost half of these work in a precarious job.

“European labour market forecasts show the biggest future demand is for high-skilled jobs in the male-dominated areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These job opportunities are not available for people with low levels of education and women in particular, are missing out. That is why equal access to affordable and good quality training is so important to provide new skills needed for the jobs of the future,” said Virginija Langbakk, EIGE’s director.

Over six million women and two million men without upper secondary education across the EU have never been employed. Fourteen per cent of women and five per cent of men with low qualifications have been out of the labour market for 10 years or more. As a result of the financial crisis, long term and youth unemployment, pose serious challenges for the EU in achieving the EU2020 employment targets.

“Low qualifications put people at a higher risk of precarious employment, which means very low pay, few working hours and insufficient job security. Almost half of women with low qualifications (45%) work in a precarious job compared to just over a quarter of men with the same level of education (26%). EIGE found that women in general are more likely to work in these types of jobs than men, regardless of their level of education. More than a quarter of women employees in the EU have precarious work,” said Ms Langbakk.