Chapter 3: The Influence of Children on Inequality in Employment between Men and Women: The Case of Spain

We have clear empirical proof of the unequal incorporation of men and women in the labour market in Spain and Europe as a whole (Anker, 1998; Comisión Europea, 2009) as the distribution of the two sexes is by no means homogeneous. By ‘homogeneous’ we do not mean a strictly equal distribution of men and women in different categories of employment, but that there is a majority of occupations or activities that are ‘integrated’ rather than predominantly masculine or feminine. In the first case the percentages of men and women in a particular occupation or activity are similar to those for employment as a whole, while the second and third are related to occupations where the percentage of men is significantly greater or less than that found in employment overall (with the corresponding differences for women). It has been demonstrated that this is the situation in the Spanish labour market, for both employees and professionals (Cebrián & Moreno, 2018; Iglesias, Llorente, & Dueñas, 2010).