However, women’s labour market participation and employment still remains significantly lower than men’s. In the OECD area, the gender gap in employment tended to converge in the 1990s, thanks to higher employment growth rates for women compared to men, and to remain constant in the period from 2000 to 2007. In the early years of the recent economic crisis, in most OECD countries gender gaps in employment shrank, mostly due to heavy job losses in male-dominated sectors.