There has been an increasing female share in employment in all western market economies in the ECE region, except for Turkey. The range of women's employment in 1993 is from almost 80% of women in Scandinavia or in eastern and central Europe worked in the formal sector and whereas only around 40% have paid jobs in Greece, Ireland and Spain, countries with the lowest formal female employment.
Despite a considerable improvement in access to work, women's jobs are concentrated in repetitive, routine and badly paid work areas at the lower, often dead-end, level of the labour market. "Female" market segments are similar in most economies and are clustered in consumer industries, public sector and selected services (hotels, catering, secretarial jobs, retail trade, personal care). Women are also considered by enterprises as a large pool of flexible labour and their employment is commonly structured around areas of frequent flexible labour adjustment. A large part of women's work in the formal sector is done under atypical work contracts offering not only lower pay but also a low level of social protection or none at all.