Increasing numbers of women have jobs involving manual labour in Poland owing to the influx of refugees from Ukraine, an employment agency reports.
According to Gremi Personal, the war in Ukraine and the related inflow of refugees, mainly women and children, have totally changed the structure of the Ukrainian workforce compared to the situation before the war.
In 2022, nearly 64% of Ukrainians working in Poland were women, which compared to just 45% in 2021.
Women constitute 51% of all 5,000 people employed by Gremi Personal as qualified and unqualified manual labourers.
“The structure of the labour market has significantly changed over the past year thanks to which more women are working in stereotypically “male” industries that until recently has been associated with physical strength,” said Vitalia Korshun, Gremi Personal’s director for international cooperation.
“The lack of manual labourers from Ukraine as a result of the war forced many companies to open up to employing women, despite being very reluctant at the beginning,” Korshun added.
She gave the example of the meat industry, where 70% of employees were now women.
“Women refugees have proved competent in the industry, which requires concentration, cleanliness and high sanitary standards,” Korshun said.
In the warehousing industry, which “is associated with physical strength”, 55% of the workers are already female, she said. (PAP/Business World Magazine)