Gender and the Greenlandic Labour Market

The Greenlandic labour market is highly gender segregated and women and men tend to face different opportunities and have different experiences with labour market participation. This chapter argues that we must understand some of the underlying mechanisms and reasons for this, to approach an overall understanding of the Greenlandic labour market. Starting with the fact of Greenland’s ’female deficit’ and the historic background explanations for this, the chapter presents existing knowledge on demographic developments in Greenland, their links to current gender roles, as well as the high levels of geographic mobility across the country. Proceeding to discuss gendered differences in educational attainment and segregation between the public vs. private labour market, these overviews of current state of the art regarding gender and the Greenlandic labour market lead up to a presentation of actual experiences with labour market participation among Greenlandic men and women. Based on ethnographic field work stemming from two research projects on gender and labour market participation undertaken in South Greenland, the chapter presents a handful of case stories which illuminate the trends discussed and provide grounds for further considerations of how best to tackle some of the gendered challenges facing the Greenlandic labour market.