Gender and migration background at their intersection. An analysis of labour market data in Europe

Gender equality is crucial to attain economic growth and sustainable development, as acknowledged by the United Nations General Assembly within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, international research has repeatedly shown that in every country of the world, including in the EU, women encounter more hurdles to access employment than men. Moreover, the unequal distribution of housekeeping and unpaid care activities results in sharp differences in men’s and women’s working conditions. Starting from the most recent edition of the Gender Equality Index (2020) and using all the relevant, available data from the European Commission’s EU Labour Force Survey and Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey, this report examines what is currently known on working conditions in Europe – and especially in Italy, Portugal, and Spain – focusing on the intersection between gender and migrant status. The available data points at two main results: first, in most European countries, a person’s gender still causes the greatest deal of discrimination (in terms of, e.g., pay gap and activity rates). Second, migrant women are made up of two very different sub-groups in terms of employment opportunities: EU citizens and non-EU citizens. While the former group often performs better than native women in most of the considered indicators – signalling possible positive self-selection into economic migration towards a different Member State than that of birth – the latter group is invariably the most disadvantaged and discriminated against in the labour market. We conclude that, to depict a comprehensive picture of gender equality in the European labour market, it appears necessary to collect data with an intersectional approach so that statistics represent both the society as a whole and its multiple social strata. Social class or gender alone are not sufficient to explain why some groups suffer from more significant disadvantages in terms of working conditions than others. Ethnicity, place of birth, disability, sexual orientation and many other personal characteristics intersect each other, shaping employment opportunities and, ultimately, the capability to lead a decent life. Migrant labourers are the backbone of today’s Europe, although the available data on migrant men and women does not allow to evaluate their employment and living conditions properly.