Large difference in employment rates between men and women!
If you compare the employment rates in EU regions, you will notice that the female employment rates still lag behind the male rates in most of the regions.
The EU has set a policy target in this area of halving the gender employment gap from 11.7% in 2019 to 5.8% by 2030.
The green regions shown here are those that have already attained the target.
Source: Eurostat
I hope this is not seen as "women do not work as much as men" or it ignores unpaid care work:
Countries that do not have enough childcare facilities, such as kindergartens and schools that do not end in the middle of the day, rely on women not working full time. The same goes for care for the elderly and disabled, and then there is unpaid community work. On top of cultures that still think men should not do any care work or household chores.
Green countries do a lot to enable women to go to work full time, but still rely way too much on women accepting more of unpaid care work on top, than men. COVID was overcome a lot by putting even more unpaid work on women's shoulders, when childcare facilities and schools closed, it also showed how many families were relying on grandparents to take care of the children when these had to be protected and could not do this care work anymore.
Germany ist still divided, because in the East the women were very much needed as workers, so the DDR provided close by, free childcare facilities for every child, school was the whole day and they gave women one day of the month free from work because they realized they did more care work than the men and needed time for that too (it was a dictatorship and childcare was also used to indoctrinate the children, not painting the DDR in good light here, just looking to explain the divide), women also had good chances on the career ladder ...
In the West in the long years of the CDU being in the government, there was still the idea of you being a bad mother if you do not stay at home, childcare wasn't made available as much as needed and school ended mid day for most schools, not to mention not enough done to give woman equality in the work environment, but given a lot of incentive for women to be stay at home mums. Now the same party wants more women to work full time because our industry suffers and of course there is no word about their part in it being the way it is.
But why is women’s employment the variable here? Why are women supposed to take the role of unpaid care workers.
They aren't "supposed" to do it, but currently are doing it and I do not see it changing. I am 57 years old and it has barely changed over the last 50 years. So I want to make sure that the situation as it is is seen when looking at this map. I am all for equal care work for all genders, I always was, but most of the time it is only about "how do we get more women in full time jobs" and not equally about "how do we get men to do equal amounts of care work".
Fair. While the focus hasn’t been on getting men to do more care work, I think that area has improved quite a bit… seemingly due to the push for higher female employment.
On the other hand, there’s the issue of general life affordability. Most families in the US require both parents to work to get by. This has been touted as a great social progress, but it’s also a great economic step back. I don’t think everyone’s idea of eutopia is 100% employment….