Reforms of the labour market regulations are an integral part of the EU Lisbon strategy. One of the aims of these reforms was to mitigate the existing imbalances in the labour market, whereby some of the social groups (elderly, women, or disabled) were facing de facto discrimination in their access to full employment possibilities.
When it comes to women, this discrimination shows in three ways:
Even though the general EU picture shows continuous discrimination against women in the labour market, the situation in the various member countries differs widely. The Nordic countries seem to have much better results than the southern ones. This might reflect the traditional projections of gender roles in their respective cultures, as well as the specificities of their social systems – some giving the traditional family a larger role in social protection, others shifting more emphasis onto the provision of affordable public social services.
Slovakia seeks to present itself as a leader in the economic reforms that the rest of the European Union will have to embrace if it wants to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” However, in many areas results are very mixed.
The most quoted challenges are:
These concerns were also voiced in the Commission’s assessment of the National Reform Programs (NRPs) of January 2006.
The assessment mentioned above gave a generally good mark to the Slovak Reform Program saying that, "the Commission shares the NRP’s analysis of the main priorities.” However, there were some weak points mentioned. Among them were "the high level of structural unemployment and the gender pay gap, which remains among the highest in the EU.” However, this report does not elaborate on the situation of women in the Slovak labour market in more detail. We have to turn to other sources.
Overall ranking
The World Economic Forum has prepared the report "Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap", showing the picture of gender differences in 58 countries. Slovakia scores neither better nor worse than the other EU-8 countries.
| Country | Rank | Score | Economic participation | Economic opportunities | Political empowerment | Educational attendance | Health & well-being |
| Sweden | 1 | 5.53 | 5 | 12 | 8 | 1 | 1 |
| Norway | 2 | 5.39 | 13 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 9 |
| Iceland | 3 | 5.32 | 17 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 6 |
| Denmark | 4 | 5.27 | 6 | 1 | 20 | 5 | 2 |
| Finland | 5 | 5.19 | 12 | 17 | 4 | 10 | 4 |
| Latvia | 11 | 4.60 | 4 | 6 | 10 | 24 | 48 |
| USA | 17 | 4.40 | 19 | 46 | 19 | 8 | 42 |
| Poland | 19 | 4.36 | 49 | 30 | 9 | 14 | 30 |
| Slovakia | 21 | 4.30 | 14 | 33 | 29 | 23 | 35 |
| Hungary | 24 | 4.19 | 30 | 3 | 28 | 39 | 40 |
| Czech Rep | 25 | 4.19 | 29 | 4 | 43 | 25 | 23 |
| Greece | 50 | 3.41 | 44 | 48 | 50 | 45 | 22 |
| Source: World Economic Forum Women's Empowerment Measuring the Global Gender Gap | |||||||
A comparison shows that Slovak women are in a relatively better position when it comes to their economic participation and educational attendance. However they are in a much more disadvantaged position regarding Health & Well-being and Economic Opportunities.
Employment and wage
When comparing the employment and work positions of Slovak men and women, the pattern copies the EU average (with obvious differences caused by much higher unemployment and lower employment in Slovakia and the still rare occurrence of part-time jobs). An important difference is the gender pay gap – Slovakia has one of the highest differences between the wages of men and women in the EU (only Cyprus scores worse and Estonia is at the same level).
| Unemployment rate | Employment rate | Employed part-time as a share of total employment | Share of female managers in total managers | Gender pay gap | ||||
| Men | Women | Men | Women | Men | Women | |||
| EU-25 | 7.6 | 9.6 | 71.2 | 56.3 | 7.3 | 32.6 | 32.1 | 15e |
| SK | 15.2 | 16.6 | 64.1 | 50.8 | 1.2 | 3.9 | 31.2 | 24 |
|
e = estimation | ||||||||
Generally, women constitute 46% of the whole Slovak workforce and this share rose by 4.5% in 1997-2002 – this in spite of the fact that their legal retirement age is generally 5 years lower (reforms from 2002 envisage a gradual closing of this gap).
Women are concentrated in the Slovak public sector – occupying more than half of all public jobs – while the private sector still sees the strong dominance of men (women have only 41% share). The imbalance is even greater when we look at entrepreneurial activity – only 25% of all entrepreneurs are women.
Slovak women also face strong horizontal and vertical job segregation. They dominate in the services sector (mostly public services) where they constitute 70% of the workforce. In some economic sectors it is even up to 80% - health services, social care and education, for example.
Education
When it comes to gender statistics in education, Slovakia also follows the line of the EU-25 average. With a higher percentage of the population completing upper secondary education than the EU-25 average, Slovak women are generally more educated than men. Even at university level they constitute the majority of the students. However, they are concentrated predominantly in humanities and the arts, which gives them fewer opportunities to get better paid jobs once they leave university.
| Share of those aged 20-24 having at least completed secondary education, 2005 | Share of women among tertiary students, 2003 | ||||
| Women | Men | Total | Science, maths & computing | Humanities & art | |
| EU-25 | 80.0 | 74.6 | 54.6 | 37.3 | 65.6 |
| SK | 92.1 | 90.9 | 53.1 | 33.9 | 54.3 |
| Source: Eurostat. A statistical view on the life of European men and women | |||||
The increase in the participation of women in the labour market is one of the goals of the Lisbon strategy: according to some experts it is indeed one of its cornerstones. In this respect, the Slovak situation reflects the overall EU picture: even with the existence of legal protection against job discrimination based on gender, women are still in a disadvantaged position.
In the case of Slovakia, the situation seems to be the result of the interplay of various factors: the traditional approach to gender roles, the lack of proactive measures (incentives for employers to engage women more in decision making processes, gender sensitive programmes in the active labour policy, etc.) and an insufficient level of social services that would enable women to harmonize family life with their working careers.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________