Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, Vol 12, No 4 (2016)

Abstract

Main purpose of this paper is to show the recent trends of labour market issues regarding gender inequality in the countries that are still in transition to the market oriented economy. Transition to competition has effected in increasing the level of unemployment to economically active population, with the higher consequence for women than for men, from which some have left the labour market. In this paper we analyze and compare gender gaps through the main components of labour market trends as level of active participation in labour market, employment, unemployment and occupational segregation for both genders of countries that are still in transition like Albania, FYR of Macedonia and Kosovo with EU countries. Since closer are these countries in joining the EU, higher are the requests for employment targets for new countries and approving and other equal opportunities policies for men and women regarding labour market. The methodology used is through case studies by using secondary data from the most recent labour force surveys (LFS) of transition countries, from which for occupational segregation the Duncan & Duncan Index is calculated. We found that depending on the stages that countries are in transition, the labour market components regarding gender are more comparable and closer with the targets of the EU countries, and for the countries that are in the latter stages of transition gender gaps are higher considering components of the labour markets.