Abstract

It is believed that automatization and technological changes will be the main drivers of work in the future. At the same time, there is a growing discussion about new forms of employment, such as self-employment. It may be either perceived as a chance for empowerment, through creating new job opportunities, that were not reachable previously, or as precarious work, with less stability, higher risk, and uncertain income. The main goal of this work is to analyze what makes women choose self-employment. Our cross-country study, conducted for 31 European countries based on 2014 European Labour Force Survey (LFS), brings a new perspective on the phenomenon. Our results suggest that self-employment may constitute an opportunity for women as higher level of skills and older age increase the probability of becoming self-employed. Moreover, as skilled people predominantly show greater skills related to the use of technology, one may conclude that the use of ICT may reinforce this form of work. On the other hand, self-employed women’s work is to a greater extent based on part-time arrangements and is frequently performed in the evenings. For this reason, it may be concluded that self-employment is an option for women who have to combine family life with work and have no chance to find typical paid employment.

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