Labor market context, economic development, and family policy arrangements: Explaining the gender gap in employment in Central and Eastern Europe

Twenty-five years after the fall of the communist regimes, the gender gap in employment varies widely across Central and Eastern Europe. This study examines the societal-level reasons for this variation and assesses the impact of different dimensions of neoliberally minded "economic development" strategies on gender inequality. We focus on Central and Eastern Europe, a segment of the world not typically addressed in the literature on gender and development. We rely on the 2008 and 2012 waves of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey as well as multiple macro-level data sources to analyze the association between development indicators, labor market context, social policy arrangements, and the gender employment gap. We find that typical growth indicators, global market integration, and social policy arrangements are not at all or only weakly associated with the gender employment gap in this region. Instead, the labor market context, specifically the degree of segregation and the size of the public and service sectors, are more important for shaping women's labor market opportunities relative to men's at both time points. Our findings contribute to the literature on the trade-offs between job segregation and aspects of gender inequality as well as to ongoing debates within the field of "gender and development" by pointing out important variations across regions.