The Commerce sector exhibits a gender imbalance, with women comprising a larger proportion of the workforce compared to men. This disparity is particularly pronounced in certain roles, such as sales associates, cashiers, and customer service representatives. There is an occupational segregation where women are frequently concentrated in frontline and entry-level positions within the commerce sector, while men are more likely to occupy managerial and executive roles.
Working conditions in women-dominated sectors in general are often characterized by pay disparities, occupational segregation, limited career advancement opportunities, part-time and flexible work arrangements, care work and emotional labour, gender-based discrimination and harassment, lack of representation in leadership roles, work-life balance challenges, inadequate support for professional development, and intersectionality. Unfortunately that is the case in the retail sector.
Through this project we will:
- implement a gender perspective with the aim to improve working conditions;
- identify and understand the specific characteristics, unique challenges and disparities;
- address gender-specific challenges;
- promote gender equality.
I’M Pinc will contribute to empower trade union officials and trade union representatives with:
- a common understanding and awareness of what a focus on gender specific challenges in working conditions should look like;
- the knowledge necessary to address the risk for deterioration of working conditions
- skills to reduce the possible negative impact based on gender of the twin transition.
The overall objective of this project is to identify and assess the impact of practising “gender neutrality” by looking at working conditions, identifying the risks, developing awarness of regulations and standards in different EU countries and on European level, comparing working conditions based on gender.
Contact: Nikoletta Kiss, Project Coordinator for Commerce.
For more information visit our MMAI project page.
This project is supported by the European Commission.