Gender and labour in times of austerity: Ireland, Italy and Portugal in comparative perspective

• Date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Tindara ADDABBO,Nata DUVVURY,Sara Falcão CASACA,Áine NÍ LÉIME,Amélia BASTOS
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00250.x
• Published date: 01 December 2015

International Labour Review, Vol. 154 (2015), No. 4

Copyright © The authors 2015

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2015

* Associate Professor, Marco Biagi Department of Economics, University of Modena and

Reggio Emilia, email: tindara.addabbo@unimore.it. ** Assistant Professor, Department of

Mathematics, School of Economics and Management, and researcher at the Centre for Ap-

plied Mathematics and Economics (CEMAPRE), University of Lisbon, email: abastos@iseg.

ulisboa.pt. *** Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, School of Economics and

Management, and researcher at the Research Centre in Economic and Organizational Sociology/

Research in Social Sciences and Management (SOCIUS-CSG), University of Lisbon, email: sarafc@

iseg.ulisboa.pt (corresponding author). **** Senior Lecturer, Global Women’s Studies, School of

Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, and member of the Gender and

Public Policy Cluster, Whitaker Institute of Business, Social Sciences and Public Policy, Galway,

email: nata.duvvury@nuigalway.ie. ***** Research Fellow, Irish Centre for Social Gerontol-

ogy, and member of the Gender and Public Policy Cluster, Whitaker Institute of Business, Social

Sciences and Public Policy, Galway, email: aine.nileime@nuigalway.ie. The authors wish to ac-

knowledge the support of the Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and

Technology (FCT), under Project PEst-OE/SADG/UI042 8/2013, for their work on Portugal.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Gender and labour in times of austerity:

Ireland, Italy and Portugal

in comparative perspective

Tindara ADDABBO,* Amélia BASTOS,** Sara Falcão CASACA,***

Nata DUVVURY**** and Áine NÍ LÉIME*****

Abstract. Using Eurostat data for 20 07, 2010 and 2012 , the authors examine

the effects of the 2008 crisis on the situation of male and female workers in Italy,

Ireland and Portugal, with particular attention to changing labour market dy-

namics, (intra-household) employment patterns, and incomes. The gender gaps

in employment, unemployment and precarious employment are narrowing, but

this trend cannot be interpreted as progress toward gender equality: it is driven

by men’s increasingly vulnerable position resulting from the generalized deteri-

oration of labour market conditions, including the growth of precarious and/or

low-paid employment, unemployment and poverty to the detriment of household

living standards.

T

he global nancial meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent wave of reforms

affected most countries across the globe. In Ireland, Italy and Portugal,

however, their impact was exacerbated by sovereign debt crises and conse-

quent scal consolidation programmes. As a result, all three countries experi-

enced severe economic recession and labour market contraction. Ireland and

International Labour Review450

Portugal were the rst to initiate reforms and implement austerity budgets

to meet the bailout conditions set by the so-called Troika, i.e. the European

Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European

Central Bank (ECB).

Based on the rich body of literature that suggests structural and eco-

nomic reforms often have gendered effects (see Rubery, 1988; Elson, 1995;

Daly, 2011), the main purpose of this article is to conduct a comparative

gender-sensitive analysis of the impact of austerity packages on recent labour

market dynamics in Ireland, Italy and Portugal. These three countries were in-

deed characterized by different “gender regimes” before the crisis, making the

analysis of its consequences particularly interesting from a gender perspective

(Anxo et al., 2007; Erhel and Guergoat-Larivière, 2013; Karamessini and Ru-

bery, 2014). In Ireland, the dominant structure of growth was heavily biased

towards construction, international nancial services, and exports. The country

faced a banking crisis, a scal crisis, an economic crisis, a “reputational crisis”,

and a social crisis. The government guarantee of banking debt in September

2008 quickly transformed the banking crisis into a sovereign debt crisis which

affected the entire economy and its scal stability (Whelen, 2013). This, in turn,

had a disastrous effect on Ireland’s ability to borrow in the markets, and by late

November 2010, the Government signed on to an EC–IMF–ECB bailout. A

key condition of the bailout was compliance with the European Union (EU)

policy guideline of a scal decit no larger than 3 per cent of GDP by 2015.

Italy has also been severely hit by the crisis. Here, scal austerity pol-

icies were undertaken in 2009 and stepped up in 2011, together with structural

reforms of the goods, services and labour markets, with a view to increasing

their efciency and competitiveness, reducing administrative costs and corrup-

tion, and incentivizing investment (Istat, 2014). According to OECD estimates,

these market reforms were to have a positive effect on GDP growth – in ten

years’ time. The Italian tax system featured complex and uncertain regulations

and a higher tax rate than the European average, which were said to have had

a negative effect on employment and on the consumption and investment be-

haviour of rms and households. More crucially, Italy is characterized by a

higher incidence of single-earner households compared to the EU average,

which heightens the risk of poverty when the typically male breadwinner loses

his job (Verashchagina and Capparucci, 2014). Moreover, as with other Medi-

terranean countries, Italy’s welfare model seems to be increasingly diverging

from the “European social model” and, being based on family support, pos-

sibly exacerbating inequalities and segmentation because of the growing eco-

nomic precariousness of households (Simonazzi, 2014 and 2015).

As for Portugal, the global nancial collapse exposed its sovereign debt

crisis and gave rise to three “Growth Programmes” in 2010 and two subsequent

packages, aimed at containing the decit and the public debt. A political crisis

erupted in March 2011, when the Parliament failed to approve the fourth Sta-

bility and Growth Programme, prompting the Government to recognize the

need for external nancial support. In May, a three-year bailout programme