Older female workers not only face an age gap in the labor market, but also marked gender gaps. Although Women are the majority among those over 55 years of age, their insertion into active life is less than that of men in this age group and the volume of unemployed women is greater than that of senior men looking for work. This is one of the gender gaps on which the IV Senior Talent Map focuses, a study presented this Tuesday by the Mapfre Foundation – prepared in collaboration with ClosinGap -, which shows the multiple aspects of the gender gaps among workers. and workers over 55 years of age, which are the age group in which there is the greatest salary difference.
One in five unemployed people in Spain is over 55 years old. This group has gone from representing 6.7% of the total unemployed in 2008 to reaching 19% in 2023, with a total of 536,000 people over that age looking for work. In the last fifteen years, not only has the volume of senior unemployed increased, but it has done so especially among women, who already represent the majority. In Spain there are 297,200 unemployed women between 55 and 69 years old compared to 234,100 men. The female unemployment rate in this population group reaches 13%, five points above the 8.78% of the male figure.
Among those who do work, women’s salaries are generally lower, with a salary difference of 14.4% in the population between 55 and 64 years old. This remuneration gap has been significantly reduced in the last ten years. In 2011, the gap was 51.9%. However, senior workers are those in whom the most abysmal differences are detected, which increase even more among those over 67 years of age to 27%. At the other end of working life, for example, among workers aged 25 to 34, the salary difference between men and women is just 1.3%.
This disparity is the result of the late incorporation of women into the workforce and the different characteristics in senior employment between men and women. For example, 18% of female employees over 55 years of age have part-time jobs, while among men the proportion is 5%. There is also a lack of visibility. 60.6% of those surveyed consider that they work with “few” women over 55 years of age. And in the most responsible positions, there are two and a half times more men than women in the categories of directors and managers.
Furthermore, the gap is also significant in self-employment. Among men over 55 years of age, 24.5% are employed in this way, compared to 15.18% among women. In fact, the number of senior male self-employed workers doubles that of women with 643,000 men between 55 and 69 women compared to 353,000 women. Likewise, the lower technological level of the initiatives undertaken by women stands out: men concentrate 91.3% of the high or medium technological level projects. “Senior female entrepreneurs are more conservative in terms of forecasting job creation than men, also in terms of forecasting the scope of their projects, in terms of team size and in terms of the percentage of exports,” the report adds.
#gender #gap #widens #among #unemployed #women #salary #difference
