Sex Discrimination in the Greek Labor Market

Sex Discrimination in the Greek Labor Market* George Psacharopoulos I. INTRODUCTION According to the latest census, women represent 51 percent of the Greek population. Should this statistic refer to the shareholders of a company, it is women that would run the economic affairs of the country. Yet casual observation and official statistics show that this majority group of the population is an economic minority. Beyond other apparent manifestations of discrimination, female pay is less than two-thirds of male pay. And, contrary to what has been happening in other European countries, the depressed economic position of Greek women has not improved over the last decade. This paper attempts an analysis of the sources of sex discrimination in the Greek labor market, with emphasis on differential pay. Part II is based on information from Census data, while Part III uses data from a special 1977 labor market survey. II. AN OVERALL PICTURE Published Greek statistics are abundant and reliable for documenting the economic position of women relative to men. In what follows these statistics are used to present a summary picture of female labor force participation, gross earnings differential and composition of female employment. Labor Force Participation Female involvement in the economic life of a given country is best expressed by the summary statistic "labor force participation rate" * Presented at the Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium, Philadelphia, Pa., (Nov. 14-16, 1980). This essay was written when the author was affiliated with the London School of Economics, before joining the World Bank. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the above institutions. Useful discussions with Mina Dodge and P. Tzannatos are gratefully acknowledged. 339 340 George Psacharopoulos TABLE 1 — Labor force participation rates by sex, 1961-1971 (percent) Year Males Females 1961 97.7 42.4 1971 85.5 31.6 Source: NSSG (annual) showing the number of "economically active" persons of a given sex as a percent of the total number of persons of the same sex, aged 15 to 64, in the population. As shown in Table 1 the labor force participation of both sexes has declined between the last two censuses, the female one now standing below one-third. The decline of the labor force attachment in general is explained by the contraction of the agricultural sector of the economy, earlier retirement and the increased participation of the younger age group in educational activities. The more rapid decline of female relative to male participation is especially due to the movement of unpaid females out of agriculture and the general rise of female enrollments in schools of all types, thus lowering the participation of the young. As shown in Table 2, the dominant feature of female employment is a rapid move towards the employee status. One might confidently anticipate that female labor force attachment in Greece will increase in the future because of increased participation of married women.1 Nevertheless, TABLE 2 — The distribution of active population by employment status, sex and age, 1961 and 1971 % Males % Females Employment status 1961 1971 1961 1971 Employers 4.2 5.2 1.2 1.2 Self-employed 41.4 42.2 12.1 14.7 Unpaid family 14.9 7.9 56.8 45.3 members Employees 37.4 44.0 25.6 38.0 Not declared 2.1 .7 4.3 .8 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Thereof aged 19.7 15.3 33.1 25.2 24 or less Source: Based on NSSG (annual). 'For a discussion of the changing female labor force participation rate at different stages of economic development, see Collver and Langlois (1962). Sex Discrimination 341 TABLE 3 — Female labor force participation rates in selected countries circa 1977 % Female labor force Country participation Belgium 45.6 Denmark 67.3 France 50.1 Germany 48.4 Italy 37.1 Portugal 50.4 Spain 32.5 Sweden 70.0 Turkey 53.2 United Kingdom 57.3 United States 55.7 Greece 31.2 Source: OECD (1980), 4. as shown in Table 3, Greece currently has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates among Western European and other countries. Gross Earnings Differentials Census information...