An Intersectional Approach to Occupational Segregation Processes Across Countries and Over Time (PROFEM)
Considering the increasing ethnical diversity of the female workforce, the urgency to clarify the impact of gender and migration background on labour market outcomes is self-evident. Promoting gender equality and empowering women is an important societal goal. However, despite the striking gains of women in the educational arena and various measures to tackle gender inequalities, the gender wage gap and other forms of unequal treatment persist. Migrant women are particularly vulnerable. They may face a double disadvantage resulting from gender and ethnicity.
PROFEM explores new research avenues and challenges the theoretical and empirical understanding of stratification processes. Following an intersectional approach, it examines occupational segregation processes from a gender-migrational perspective across countries and over time. A cross-national, multi-method and multi-level research design allows PROFEM to:
- improve measures of gender-migrational occupational segregation and develop a typology of segregation regimes in the EU;
- examine the influence of educational fields and specializations on gender-migrational occupational distribution;
- explore the impact of changes in the gender-migrational occupational composition of wages;
- analyze the management of gender-migrational differences in companies;
- address the impact of institutional contexts on the maintenance of gender/migrant differences.
PROFEM will answer these questions in five sub-projects differentiating between three analytical levels (micro-, meso- and macro-level).
PROFEM offers an unprecedented, comprehensive theoretical framework to refine the understanding of the combined impact of gender and migration background on systems of inequality. Given current migration processes, the research is of utmost social and political relevance. A thorough understanding of the challenges faced by migrant women is a prerequisite for successful integration measures in the EU.
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