Abstract

The article examines in-work poverty in the EU, adopting a gender perspective. Gender stereotypes influence girls’ educational path in the early stage, and have an impact on the quality of their labour market participation. Data also show that women are in a disadvantaged condition compared with men in terms of both quality of contractual conditions, and wages. The unpaid care burden weighs disproportionately on women, and leads to a discontinuous presence in the labour market. Yet, the Eurostat indicator monitoring in-work poverty shows that more men than women are at risk of in-work poverty in Europe. The reason is that the general approach to in-work poverty in the EU adopts the household dimension in the calculation, which covers the specific situation of women by assuming an equal distribution of resources among family members. The authors analyse this gender paradox with the aim of informing the development of more effective gender policies to tackle in-work poverty.