The service sector: Boone or bane for women’s economic security?

Service sector employment is the main engine of job growth in post-industrial economies and regarded as a driver of female labor market participation and thus gender equality. However, due to country-specific institutional complementarities, service sectors show significant cross-national variation in size and structure, which also affect women’s employment situation. While Anglo-Saxon countries may provide more opportunities for women to attain high-status positions, the polarization of their labor markets also leads to precarious employments in low-paid service jobs. In Continental and Mediterranean European countries, the trend has been to deregulate at the margin, increasing the insider-outsider-divide.

Additionally, as atypical employment in coordinated economies predominantly exists in the service sector, service sector employees, mostly women, are more likely to face risks not sufficiently covered in traditional welfare systems. At the same time, existing family policies, especially child care services also shape women's labor market options.

In our paper we ask how micro, macro, and cross-level interaction effects determine women’s economic security. On the micro-level, we investigate the impact of skills and employment situations, while on the macro-level we focus on the structure of service sectors shaped by labor market regimes and skill formation systems as well as family policies. We use a multi-level-model based on new data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies and OECD statistics. We conclude that while female labor market participation is closely linked to service sector growth, the developments towards service economies also entail severe poverty risks for women depending on the institutional settings.