Gender, jobs, and working conditions in the EU - A summary

The Third European survey on working conditions was carried out in 2000 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions; information was collected on the working conditions, health and well-being of the people in paid employment in the 15 EU Member States. The information was collected from individual workers in face-to-face interviews, in which they were asked to describe a number of aspects of their work and workplaces through a series of structured questions. Two previous surveys were carried out in 1991 and 1995/6 that permit an analysis of trends in some working conditions, and this latest survey has been expanded to include a much wider range of issues. This summary relates some of the main findings of the third survey in terms of gender-related issues and relies on extensive secondary analysis of the third survey dataset. It is a synopsis of the report Gender, jobs and working conditions by Colette Fagan and Brendan Burchell.