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Vicious and virtuous cycles of female labour force participation in post-socialist Eastern Europe. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 119/2016 November 2016

Avlijas, Sonja (2016) Vicious and virtuous cycles of female labour force participation in post-socialist Eastern Europe. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 119/2016 November 2016. [Discussion Paper]

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    Abstract

    Female labour force participation (hereinafter FLFP) trends across Eastern Europe, which were very high during communism, started to diverge substantially following its collapse. Women did not appear to benefit from the changing labour market conditions in those transition countries that pursued industrial upgrading as their strategy of economic development. On the other hand, in some small transition economies, most notably the Baltic countries, women benefited substantially from increased employment opportunities in the knowledgeintensive public and private sector services. This article seeks to explain the observed variation in FLFP rates across the region by synthesising insights from macroeconomic and comparative political economy literature. It identifies four key relationships between industrial upgrading, educational expansion and the expansion of knowledge-intensive services and examines how these factors interacted and translated into specific FLFP outcomes. The article suggests that industrial upgrading, driven by foreign direct investment, created a vicious cycle for FLFP. First of all, the upgrading led to a defeminisation of manufacturing because female labour-intensive sectors were not upgraded. Furthermore, the upgrading absorbed the budgetary resources that could have been used for educational reform and general skills formation. This lack of educational reform impeded the development of knowledge-intensive services, which would have been more conducive to the generation of female employment. The virtuous cycle of FLFP, on the other hand, occurred in those Eastern European countries that turned to reforming their educational sector towards general skills and expansion of tertiary education, with the aim of transforming themselves into knowledge economies. Such a transformation required an active social investment oriented state and an expansion of knowledge-intensive public and private sector employment. This development path created a positive causal loop for FLFP. I test these propositions quantitatively on a sample of 13 Eastern European countries.

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    Item Type: Discussion Paper
    Uncontrolled Keywords: female labour force participation, industrial upgrading, knowledge intensive economy, social investment, capitalist diversity, Eastern Europe
    Subjects for non-EU documents: Countries > Estonia
    Countries > Hungary
    Countries > Latvia
    Countries > Lithuania
    Countries > Poland
    Countries > Romania
    Countries > Slovenia
    Countries > Bulgaria
    Countries > Czech Republic
    Countries > Cyprus
    Countries > Malta
    Countries > Croatia
    Countries > Macedonia
    Countries > Serbia (June 2006-on)
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > employment/labour market > employment/unemployment
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > London School of Economics and Political Science (European Institute) > LEQS Discussion Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 05 Aug 2018 14:01
    Number of Pages: 62
    Last Modified: 05 Aug 2018 14:01
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/93629

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