Gender Dynamics in the Dualisation of Coordinated Market Economies

Recent research about growing inequalities in some of the most protected employment economies has pointed to the dualisation of employment conditions originating in the expansion of non-standard employment and the deregulation of social protection coverage for significant segments of the workforce. This paper will focus on the gendered dynamics of dualisation in Germany and Japan, and show that dualisation is not novel, but rather deeply rooted (1) in the failure in both countries to pursue social and family policy changes in strong male breadwinner models of employment and (2) well established occupational segregation of work by gender. As a result, class-based inequalities have become more salient, though these were considered less relevant in the coordinated market economies. In Japan, the expansion of temporary and part-time labor over four decades has exposed women and less educated youth to market-based employment systems at odds with the employment conditions of better educated segments and older cohorts of the male core workforce. German policies and practices designed to protect skilled male workers in manufacturing have failed to transfer to occupations performed mainly by women, while sub-forms of part-time and temporary work have deepened the divisions between men and women in non-standard employment.