Impact of the crisis on women’s work conditions

Economic activity and unemployment rate in Poland

Note: Own analysis based on GUS data

Given the data from the labour market and the report’s contents, it is important to look more closely at the impact of the crisis on women’s conditions at work.

Impact of the crisis on women’s working conditions

Based on interviews with female trade union activists from both the public and the private sector, the author of one of report’s chapters, Julia Kubisa, points out:

...when talking about the consequences of the crisis in the female-dominated sectors where trade unions are active, one can notice the escalation of certain tendencies, which may become permanent or even institutionalised as an employment model even after the crisis.

According to the interviewees, these tendencies include:

• intensification of work without an accompanying increase in wages;

• a growing number of women employed under flexible forms of employment (fixed length employment contracts, civil law contracts, part-time jobs, seven-day working week);

• increase in job insecurity.

From the point of view of the female trade union activists, another major problem is the lack of a comprehensive family policy and the increase in living costs as a result of the increase in value-added tax (VAT).

‘The crisis is best visible at home’

Further discussion of these issues is found in another chapter describing in detail the impact of the crisis on unpaid work performed at home. According to the data presented in the report, household duties are perceived in Poland as women’s work and are performed by women. Over 90% of women and men believe that caring for a child is, first of all, the woman’s duty; 99.6% of women who are in a relationship and who have children under 17 years of age perform domestic duties and housework whereas 11% of men in the same situation do not perform any work related to housekeeping or child rearing

The impact of the crisis on women, from the point of view of household duties, is evident. On the one hand, the increase in living costs (see table) means that households are trying to make savings wherever possible through unpaid work performed by women. On the other hand, women workers dominate commercial childcare services, which households are now abandoning.

The impact of the crisis is also emphasised by Zofia Łapniewska, one of the report’s editors, who writes as follows when analysing the state budget:

The economic crisis has highlighted gender inequality in the division into productive and reproductive labourers. While various solutions aimed at stimulating the economy were offered to productive labourers, at the same time, discussions were held on the reduction of spending on social purposes, for instance, by privatising social care.