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Despite the gains women have made in the last three decades, a large body of research has recently emerged suggesting that major economic changes occurring on a global scale are having detrimental consequences for women's labour market position. At best, these developments are judged likely to limit further progress toward gender equality. While macroeconomic policies are not in themselves the subject of this study, it would be misleading to present a review of past policies and programs without drawing attention to present economic circumstances. In particular, the wider economic context may place constraints on what it is possible to achieve through policy interventions such as those reviewed here.

Economic Restructuring

In recent years, the term restructuring has been used to refer to a series of changes occurring within the global economy. These changes include increased international competition between nations for investment, increased capital mobility, a greater emphasis on trade, and reduced public spending and regulation of the economy. With these changes there has been a move toward deregulation of labour markets, as well as a corresponding increase in flexible forms of labour such as part-time work, contracting and sub-contracting, outsourcing and homework.⁷ At the same time, economies have shifted from a manufacturing to a knowledge base. This shift has been accompanied by an increasing emphasis on the need for highly skilled specialist workers.

There is a considerable body of literature examining the differential impact on women and men of these labour market changes. In most industrialized nations, a pattern of "harmonizing down" for some men has emerged.⁸. In Canada, men's real earnings have not increased for over 20 years, and male participation rates have fallen over the same period. Certain traditionally male occupations, mainly in the primary resource industries and manufacturing, are disappearing altogether. A growing proportion of men is either unemployed, employed involuntarily part-time, or holding non-permanent employment. Many observers caution that the deterioration in men's labour market position may exaggerate the gains women have made over the last few decades.

Three trends associated with restructuring have important implications for women's labour market position.

• Expansion of the service sector: growing wage polarization and increase in non-standard work

While the manufacturing and primary industries have declined, the service sector, where women have traditionally been concentrated, has grown quite substantially. The service sector is highly heterogeneous, encompassing both well-paid professional and technical occupations as well as low-skill, poorly paid occupations. A stratum of highly skilled, high-status workers has formed, coupled with a large mass of technically semi-skilled or unskilled workers who acquire their training on the job or in short courses lasting a few weeks⁹. Wage polarization has accompanied the growing demand for highly skilled workers and declining demand for unskilled labour. Increasingly, the workforce is segmented into a primary labour market offering good wages, job security, and opportunities for advancement, and a secondary labour market of low-paid, contingent workers¹⁰ Women, and especially visible minority women, remain over-represented in the latter.

Furthermore, the service sector is the site of a large and growing proportion of non-standard forms of work, typically providing less job security, lower pay, and fewer fringe benefits¹¹. Non-standard forms of work include part-time, temporary, non-day, homework, and shiftwork, multiple job-holding, and contracting and sub-contracting. Women are much more likely than men to have non-standard employment¹². While the shift toward atypical forms of work may benefit women to the extent that they disproportionately occupy these kinds of jobs, the increased demand for non-standard workers will not necessarily be accompanied by higher wages.¹³

• Decline of the public sector

A second important development associated with restructuring is the decline of the public sector. Over the past few decades, growth of the public sector has been an important factor in women's integration into the labour market in industrialized countries.

The OECD reports that women are now over-represented among public employees in all countries.¹⁴

The public sector has also been a source of especially good jobs for women. Public sector workers are significantly more educated and significantly more likely than their private sector counterparts to be employed in professional, managerial, and technical occupations. Large numbers of public sector workers are women employed in female-dominated professional occupations in sectors like education, health, and social services. Furthermore, the gender gap in earnings is smaller in the public sector than in the private, due both to the concentration of highly skilled female-dominated professions in the public sector, and to a more compressed wage structure overall.¹⁵

• Rise in self-employment

A third trend associated with restructuring is the dramatic expansion in self-employment. The number of self-employed has rapidly expanded as large corporations and governments downsize and jobs are eliminated. Rising self-employment is also associated with the growth of the service sector and with the adoption of policies promoting contracting out and privatization by government.

Thirty-one percent of employment growth from 1976 to 1997 has been in the form of self-employment. Although self-employment is more prevalent among men than among women, in recent years, female self-employment has grown faster than self-employment among men. In 1996, women constituted about one third of all self-employed Canadians, compared to 26% twenty years before¹⁶. For some women, business creation is a solution to unemployment or underemployment. On the other hand, for highly educated and professional women who leave well-paid positions in order to head their own businesses, self-employment is frequently a response to the "glass ceiling."

While self-employment certainly allows some women to improve their economic situation, for many others it offers limited opportunities.

• Difficulty in obtaining financing is the obstacle women report most frequently to business start-up and expansion. A 1994 study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported that 42% of self-employed women were concerned about access to financing.¹⁷ Compared to men, women are more often associated with factors related to loan refusal. These include their concentration in sectors, such as food and beverage, retail trade, and other services, that have lower than average approval rates. Other factors are smaller firm size, fewer liquid assets, less managerial experience, and an unproven track record.¹⁸
• Statistics Canada reports that self-employed women are concentrated in just a few service industries. The most common occupations for self-employed women are child care, sales, and hairdressing¹⁹. Thus, a considerable portion of self-employment is located at the lower end of the labour market and offers relatively poor wages and insecure work.
• Once self-employed, women typically earn less than both their paid worker counterparts and self-employed men, and receive fewer benefits.

Many governments are encouraging people to start their own businesses as a way of promoting economic independence and job growth. Entrepreneurship programs have been widely introduced. But these programs do not generally achieve high female participation rates, nor do they address the problem of women's limited access to credit. In fact, the evaluation literature indicates that, so far, self-employment programs have tended to benefit men more than women²⁰.

Some jurisdictions have introduced self-employment programs targeted specifically at women. For example, the Women's Enterprise Initiative, funded through Western Economic Diversification Canada, provides business information and services to women entrepreneurs. Services include access to a loan fund, advisory services, and networking. Similarly, one of the main purposes of New Opportunities for Women (NOW), a European Union-wide initiative financed through the European Social Fund, is to promote women's entrepreneurship. Most projects funded through NOW combine training with activities such as market research, drawing up business plans, mentorship, and developing sector-specific knowledge. In the future the initiative intends to focus on facilitating access to capital and financial aid, and on providing more support after business set-up. These kinds of measures can help to overcome some of the unique barriers women face when seeking to become self-employed.

Footnotes

7	Statistics Canada reports that in 1999, 41% of employed women worked in a non-standard work arrangement - including part-time work, temporary work, self-employment, and multiple job holding - up from 35% in 1989. Although the proportion of men working in non-standard work arrangements has also grown over this period, men are still less likely than women to hold non-standard jobs (only 29% of men worked in non-standard jobs in 1999, up from 22% in 1989). (Statistics Canada, Women in Canada, Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2000.)
8	Armstrong (1996)
9	Standing (1989)
10	Economic Council of Canada (1991)
11	Krahn (1995)
12	Krahn (1995)
13	Gunderson (1998)
14	OECD (1994)
15	Wage structures are discussed in detail in the section on policies affecting pay.
16	Lin, Yates and Picot (1999), p. 4.
17	Cited in Business Development Bank of Canada, Women Entrepreneurs: ... (1997)
18	Fabowale et al. 1994)
19	Cited in Business Development Bank of Canada, Women Entrepreneurs: ... (1997).
20	For example see Graves and Gauthier (1995) and Martin (1998).