Women in transition and today: what do they want, realize, and experience in the labor market?

We investigate how women’s attitude and realization of choices towards equal participation in the labor market changes with age, and how these patterns differ between generations in transition and Western economies. As transition countries experienced a drop in employment rates regardless of gender, we study the relative change in the position of women, compared to similarly endowed men. We find that disentangling age, time, and cohort effects is necessary to appropriately assess women’s progress on labor markets in transition. The results indicate that in Western Europe countries women born later have much more equal position on the labor market as compared to older birth cohorts, but this is not the case in transition economies.