Gender, Mobility, and Middle Class in Europe and Central Asia

New qualitative fieldwork in eight
countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) indicates that
the dramatic declines in poverty in much of the region over
the last decade do not appear to be registering very
favorably with men and women on the ground. This paper
provides a gender analysis of findings from equal numbers of
sex-specific focus groups with employed and jobless
individuals. The methodology featured a standardized package
of semi-structured data collection tools, which enabled
systematic comparative analysis of the datasets from 37
urban and rural communities across eight countries in the
region. While lack of jobs and the rising cost of living are
central concerns for both women and men across the sample,
the qualitative data highlights important gender differences
in how men and women are responding to these challenges that
quantitative survey approaches appear to miss. Throughout
the sample, women are widely reported to be doing everything
they can to pull their households out of poverty or to
maintain their families in the middle class, while men voice
deep frustration with their weak economic opportunities and
the need for additional household members to contribute
economically. Women’s increased economic participation in
the face of men’s hardships with breadwinning - and the
stress on gender roles and relations that this entails - are
crucial for making sense of frustrations on the ground
despite the region’s significant social and economic development.