Gender Differences in Precarious Employment Across CEECs

Recent trends in the global market and consequent changes in the structure of labour markets have substantially changed employment forms and relations. Employers embrace precarious work because it allows them to limit or reduce their permanent workforce to a minimum, and to maximise profits and, much needed, flexibility. This paper examines the gender differences in precarious employment across Central and East European countries (CEECs) labour markets. Precarious employment is defined as short-term contract of duration up to three months. Gender differential of precarious employment suggests that precarious employment is relatively equally spread among males and females. To explore thoroughly possible gender differences in precarious work, probit model with sample selection is applied to the Labour Force Survey 2019 dataset. Although females do not have significantly higher rate of precarious employment, results suggest that they tend to participate in the labour market at smaller scale, implying that they tend to choose inactivity over unfavourable employment arrangements.