Study on non-legislative initiatives for companies to promote gender ...

Gender equality initiatives 121
4 Comparative analysis and assessment
Based on the descriptions of the various approaches and types of non-legislative
initiatives in chapter 2 and initiatives individually taken by companies in chapter 3, the
present chapter is devoted to a comparative analysis of the diversity of measures with a
view to how they are designed, success factors and drawbacks, effectiveness, and
scope of use.
4.1 Comparing types and themes of initiatives
The overall aim of all the initiatives identified is to tackle gender inequalities and to
contribute to more gender equality. Nevertheless, many of the initiatives have a more
special focus. Concrete aims for implementing such measures are manifold and
reflect both specific fields where gender inequalities are visible and/or particularly
challenging as well as particular regional conditions. So, the most important areas of
intervention include:
• Reconciliation of work and family: As women remain the main responsible
person in the families to organise the household and to care for the children, a
better reconciliation leads to an improvement of the situation of women in the
labour market. Therefore, some of the initiatives focus on the double burden of
women through supporting and highlighting of good practices of enterprises in
reconciling work and family. All these initiatives include elements which aim at
changing the common attitude and traditional division of labour among the
genders and fostering the role and responsibilities of fathers in the long run to
arrive at an equal sharing of family duties.
• Horizontal labour market segregation: In all European countries, women are
overrepresented in certain industry sectors and underrepresented in others.
There are typical “female sectors”, such as education or personal services, and
there are also typical “male sectors”, mostly technical and industry-oriented.
This horizontal segregation is seen as one of the reasons for the gender pay
gap, as female connoted jobs are regularly lower compensated. Thus, some of
the initiatives aim at increasing women’s participation in so-called “male sectors”
and economic fields to contribute to more gender equality and to tackle
companies’ skills shortages at the same time.
• Vertical labour market segregation: There also persists a vertical gender
segregation which results in an underrepresentation of women in decisionmaking
and management positions and contributes to the gender pay gap as
well. Thus, some initiatives explicitly focus on measures to increase the share of
women in decision-making bodies and management positions and to highlight
enterprises active in this field.
• Backlash in former socialist countries: The former socialist countries are
confronted with a specific situation. The socialist regimes aimed at integrating
all persons into the workforce and full time employment for women was the
normal case (albeit poorly paid). The state provided childcare institutions and
full-time day-care for children in school. Due to ideological backgrounds,
education was seen as a public duty and families did not have the same
importance here as in civil society. After the fall of the Iron Curtain a backlash
started which resulted in a re-orientation towards a very traditional model of the