CYPRIOT women are among the group of Europeans with the highest employment rates after having children, while they are also in line with the general EU trend according to which the more children women have the lower the employment percentage rates.
Cypriot men have high employment rates whether they have children or not, according to EU 2003 figures released by Eurostat in Brussels yesterday.
It appears there are no huge employment rates differences among member states, with only Malta standing out. Employment among Maltese women with a child under 12 years is only 26.7 per cent.
According to the Eurostat figures covering both women and men between 20 and 49, the percentage rates of Cypriot women without children under 12 who work is 74.9 per cent, only slightly less than the 75.1 per cent EU average.
However, when they have children under 12 it decreases to 69.7 per cent, which is still much higher than the European average (60.4%).
Figures for Cypriot men are much higher, with 93.4 per cent who don’t have children under 12 working, when the EU average is 85.7 per cent, which increases to 95.8 per cent, when they have children under 12 (EU average is 91.3%).
The general trend within Europe is that the more children under 12 a woman has the more likely it is she will stop working. On average 64.8 per cent of women work when they have one child, there is a drop to 57.8 per cent when they have a second child and a further drop to 41.2 per cent with the third.
Employment rates for Cypriot women are higher in this category as well: with one child the percentage is 72.9, with the second it decreases slightly to 71.5 per cent and only falls drastically, to 51.6 per cent, with the third sibling.
It also appears Europeans are also not very fond of part-time employment, which in this survey is calculated at less than 30 hours a week. The average among women who don’t have a child under 12 is only 15.2 per cent and increases to 22.7 per cent for those who do.
Part-time work is taken up mostly by Dutch women, 33 per cent for those without a child under 12 and 54.7 per cent for those who have a child under this age.
Respective figures for Cypriot women are only 8.8 and 8.3 per cent, while for men they are even lower, with 2.2 and 1.5 per cent.
