Since the 1990s, the EU’s labour market has undergone a quiet revolution. Female employment has climbed from 55% to 70%, and of the 30 million net new jobs created in the EU since 1995, women have taken up two-thirds. However, the latest data from the 2024 European Working Conditions Survey show that women and men can often have vastly different working experiences in Europe.
In a special recording at the VoxBox Studios at the European Parliament in Brussels, Maria Walsh MEP and Barbara Gerstenberger from Eurofound analyse some of the main gender equality findings from over 36,000 workers across 35 countries. Their conversation, which takes place for International Women’s Day, highlights a shift from the physical grind of the industrial age to modern stressors like burnout and technostress.
They emphasise that, while job quality is generally improving across the bloc, the social environment at work has deteriorated for women, driven by a higher exposure to verbal abuse and harassment in service-heavy roles.
Labour market segregation remains deeply entrenched, with only a quarter of people in Europe working in gender-mixed occupations. Because women remain the backbone of essential but high-pressure sectors like healthcare and education, they face higher emotional demands and greater work intensity than their male counterparts. In these female-dominated sectors, 40% of workers still suffer from physical issues like painful working positions, which only adds to the mental strain.
Maria and Barbara look at how inequality follows women home. Among those who provide regular care, women clock an average of 26 hours a week on childcare, compared to just 17 for men. This explains a paradox in the data: women report a better work-life balance than men, but often only because they make it fit by choosing part-time roles or lower-demand sectors. The trade-off is a persistent pay gap and, eventually, a smaller pension.
Barbara and Maria also discuss the digital domain: in 2024, a lower share of women than men reported using generative AI tools, and women struggle more with work-life conflict in hybrid settings. As Europe moves toward an AI-driven, digitalised economy, policymakers must ensure this does not become a new, permanent gap in job quality.
With a third of all workers now wishing they could work fewer hours, the message for International Women’s Day 2026 is clear: a good job in Europe can no longer be measured by productivity alone, but by how well it protects the health and boundaries of the people doing it. In this regard, women on the labour market in Europe often find themselves losing out.
Click here to get notified and watch the full discussion when it goes live on YouTube on Friday 6 March at 11:00 CET.
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