First steps on the labour market

Original titel: Eerste treden op de arbeidsmarkt

Women in the Netherlands have been outperforming men in education for many years now. However, this superior educational achievement does not translate into a better position on the labour market. More women work today than in the past, but still fewer than men. Women also much more often work part-time than men, and also earn less.

There is a suspicion that these differences between men and women arise at an early stage in their careers, and the focus in this study is therefore on young women and men aged between 18 and 35 years. Its purpose is to discover whether the transition from school to work and the early career phase is different for young women than for young men. We also investigate whether the labour market position of young women and men in the Netherlands differs from that of their peers in other European countries.

This report presents the initial findings of a longer-term study of the position of young working women and men in the Netherlands. The study is being carried out by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research ¦ scp at the request of the Emancipation Department of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. It is funded jointly by the Emancipation Department and the European Commission.

Ans Merens works in the Care, Emancipation and Time Use research sector at SCP. Her research interests focus on the labour market position of women and men, promotion to senior positions and gender-based wage gaps.

Freek Bucx also works in the Care, Emancipation and Time Use research sector at SCP, carrying out research on children, teenagers and young adults and on family life in the Netherlands.

Christoph Meng is a researcher at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) at Maastricht University. His main research interests are the transition from school to work, the determinants of drop-out, the acquisition and role of competencies and genderbased wage gaps.