Maria Lauxen-Ulbrich

Gender view on self-employment in Germany

Inspite of an excessive growth in woman self-employment in Germany, most research findings indicate a striking gender gap in a quantitative as well as in a qualitative sense. Until a few years ago, there had been a substantial lack of up-to-date representative statistical information on the development and structures of men and woman self-employment. An earlier version of this paper presented in 2002 for the first time sets up an analysis using cross-sectional Micro Census Data for Germany. This paper is an updated version, comparing socio-economic characteristics, occupational patterns and the sectoral distribution of self-employed women and men in 2004 and 1995. The results show slight structural changes towards higher education levels of self-employed women. With respect to occupational attainment, a trend of growing women self-employment in non-typical womans professions, predominantly managers, consultants and auditors is visible and traditional occupations in women self-employment are becoming less important. It seems that women self-employment is earning profit out of the overall growth in certain service sectors such as health and social services, education and also to a certain extent in business-related services. Albeit recent trends, a gender bias in self-employment largely persists with respect to the share of women-owned businesses, the size of establishment, income and the extent of part-time work.

Selbstständige Frauen in Deutschland: Umfang, Entwicklung und Profil

Frauen mag vielleicht die Halfte des Himmels gehoren, doch in vielen wichtigen Bereichen des gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Lebens sind Frauen noch immer stark unterreprasentiert. Dazu gehort, dass Frauen weit weniger haufig als Manner ein Unternehmen grMunden und fMuhren. Der geringe Anteil von Frauen an den beruflich Selbststandigen ist ein international beobachtbares Phanomen (Lohmann 2001, OECD 1998) und kommt — wie im folgenden noch aufgezeigt wird — auch in Deutschland klar zur Geltung. Doch trotz der Geschlechterdisparitaten hat sich die Grundungs- und Selbststandigenforschung lange Zeit in vergleichsweise bescheidenem Umfang dem Thema „Frauen“ angenommen.

Income Differentials on Regional Labour Markets in Southwest Germany

The aim of our paper is to identify explanatory variables for income disparities between women and men across different regional types. Using data from the BA Employment Panel (BEP) descriptive statistics show that the gender pay gap grows wider from core regions to periphery. The main explanatory variables for the income differentials are vocational education in the mens case and size of enterprise in the womens case. Whereas in the case of women the importance of vocational status increases and the importance of size of enterprise decreases from rural areas to urban areas.