The conference on women’s health and work, organised by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) from March 4 to 6 in Brussels showed that a situation of equal rights for men and women in the workplace is very far from having been achieved. A serious obstacle on the road to such equality is the invisibility of the specific risks to which working women are exposed and that stem frequently from work organization methods. The deeply entrenched nature of sexual segregation on the labour market and of sexist stereotypes serves to reinforce the status quo.
The main findings of the European Working Conditions Survey – conducted every five years by Eurofound (the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions) – were presented by Colette Fagan, a sociologist from the University of Manchester. She described the extent to which the phenomenon of gender-based occupational segregation remains present: in 2010, 69% of managerial posts are still filled by men, while 67% of service and sales workers are women.