Determinants of female economic activity in Poland
[ 1 ] Instytut Zarządzania i Systemów Informacyjnych, Wydział Inżynierii Zarządzania, Politechnika Poznańska | [ P ] employee | [ D ] phd student
2023
chapter in monograph / paper
english
- Entrepreneurship
- professional actvity of women
- professional actvity of men
- determinants of professional actvity
- European Union
- Poland
EN The aim of this article is to present - against the background of the literature on the subject and empirical data collected by governmental institutions operating in the European Union - the entrepreneurial activity rate of women in Poland over ten years (2012-2021). In order to achieve the main objective, secondary data from Eurostat and the Central Statistical Office (CSO) were analysed, detailing the employment rate by gender and working age by Polish voivodeships. Indicators were analysed in the following ranges: average gross wage and its valorisation in 2012-2021, median wages in industries with the highest employment and wages at different levels of organization in 2020. The tools of mathematical analysis and the basics of stochastic processes were used to calculate the data presented in the publication, determining the particular sensitivity ranges of the published results. When examining women's economic activity, it should be emphasised that issues related to it are a relatively new research direction, and an understanding of the specifics of the subject seems particularly important given that the number of women starting businesses in recent decades has been characterized by a permanent upward trend. The role of economically active women assumes particular importance in contemporary economic processes, as their presence on the labour market and in the public sphere is one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. Women's professional activity became a phenomenon on a social scale in the 1960s and 1970s, while the number of women working in Poland and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been increasing dynamically since the end of World War II, which was conditioned by industrializing, based primarily on manual labour. When analysing the female employment rate in Poland, attention should be paid to the country's position in relation to other EU Member States. The twenty-first position points to unlimited development opportunities and the need to support this economic space at every level of economic activity. This conclusion is reinforced by the statistics achieved by the opposite sex - men - which showed an upward trend over the period studied (2012-2021). This is also confirmed by the value of the calculated median female salary, which is lower by EUR 126.2 than the median gross male salary in Poland. Analysis of individual indicators relating to women's labour force participation in Poland has made it possible to provide answers to the questions what the current state of affairs is and what its determinants are. Thanks to the published results of the study on the employment rate by gender in European Union countries, the different situation of women and men can be seen. On the other hand, visible discrimination against women appears in the analysis of the average gross salary at different levels of organization in Poland, which can be used to support and create additional aid programs to support women's economic activity. A defined indicator of female entrepreneurship will allow recommendations to be tailored for state bodies and local government institutions supporting women's economic activity in Poland as well as in other EU countries with a similar economic structure.
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