About 11,000 housewives joined the labor market in 2010, almost half as many as the previous year, according to the 5th Report on the Profile of Working Women prepared by Adecco and the Adecco Foundation.
The profile of the Canarian working woman is that of a person between 18 and 30 years old, with elementary education, who works in the hospitality sector on a part-time basis. For the fourth consecutive year, the Canary Islands was the community with the highest female representation among its workers, with 58.2 percent compared to the national average of 46.8 percent.
Nationally, the main incorporation of women has come from housewives, who have abandoned their domestic chores to look for a job in the labor market. If in 2009 the incorporation was more than 100,000 housewives, in 2010 another wave of 170,000 women is repeated.
In the Canary Islands, this incorporation has slowed down in 2010, going from 20,000 women in 2009 to 11,000 last year. 58.2 percent of the total number of workers hired by Adecco and the Adecco Foundation in the Canary Islands in 2010 were women.
This percentage once again positions the Canary Islands as the Community with the highest representation of women among its workers, exceeding the national average (46.8) by more than 10 percentage points.
Men's rate
From 2008 to 2010, the rate among men has decreased from 69.21 to 67.72 percent, with the number of inactive men increasing by 80,100 people. This data contrasts with the evolution of women in the labor market, who continue their massive incorporation, mainly from housewives.
In the Canary Islands, the evolution of the activity rate between genders does not coincide with the national average, as both have decreased in 2010, although that of women at a slower rate than that of men: the female rate has gone from 54.98 to the current 54.74 percent and the male rate from 70.87 to the current 69.49 percent.
Despite the fact that the female activity rate has slowed down, due to the increase in inactive women in 2010 (of 6,700), there has been an incorporation into the market of 2,200 Canarian women in total who activated their job search, while 8,700 Canarian men abandoned it.
Within the group of women, those who have joined the labor market the most have been those between 25 and 54 years old (9,000) followed by those over 55 (4,000 people). On the contrary, active women between the ages of 16 and 19 decreased by 3,000 people and those between 20 and 24 years old by 7,800.
National data
In Spain, around 80 percent of women who join the labor market are housewives who continue to leave their homes to look for a job, in order to alleviate the crisis of their domestic economy.
If in 2009 there were more than 100,000 who made this decision, last year there were about 170,000 housewives. In the whole of the national territory, in 2010 there have been 3,921,400 women who declare themselves inactive because they are dedicated to housework, 171,600 less than the previous year.
Also, unemployment among women with secondary education is still lower than that of university women. Despite the massive incorporation of women into the labor market, the crisis has prevented workers from being placed. In net terms, in 2010 there have been 6,600 jobs destroyed occupied by women, although the impact has been much less than among men.
In the full year, 237,700 jobs were destroyed, of which 230,000 belonged to male labor. As a positive point, it should be noted that job destruction has slowed down in 2010, as the previous year 1,200,000 people stopped being employed.
ACN Press
