The improvement in women’s labor conditions and the elimination of segregation and other forms of direct or indirect discrimination have become one of the major challenges of the international political agenda, and as so have been included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) launched by the UN in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the same time, there is an increasing interest in the effects that the Social Economy (SE) might have on the achievement of the SDGs, as a consequence of its distinguishing of people-oriented principles. The goal of this paper is to analyze the specific contribution of SE entities to the reduction of gender inequalities in the labor market. We conduct an impact analysis with quasi-experimental counterfactual techniques, in which we compare one experimental group (the SE) with a control group (profit-seeking firms) using labor data from Spain for the period 2008–2017. The results indicate that social economy entities significantly contribute to the achievement of SDGs 5, 8 and 10, showing higher female participation, more stable jobs, and a lower degree of the glass-ceiling phenomenon.

The values shared by social economy enterprises generate a differentiated behaviour of these entities in relation to their staff composition, the work conditions, their productive specialisation and their geographical location compared to the profit seeking firms (corporations and limited liability companies). This differentiated behaviour constitutes an important contribution to social cohesion, and in particular from a gender perspective, it foster a higher participation in labour market and better labour conditions. The mail goal of the paper is to evaluate the existence of the differentiated behavior of social economy entities in terms of equal opportunities and labour conditions, focusing in Spain. We use the Continuous Work History Sample (MCVL) for the year 2010 and identify the target group and the control group that are statistically comparable in terms of size and industry. We first analyze the differences between workers conditions in both groups applying parametric and nonparametric test for average differences. Secondly, we focus on wages discrimination, using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique. Results show that social economy entities provide better conditions in access to employment and labour stability, and also show lower gender wage discrimination.

The strategies for integrating people with disabilities into the labor market have evolved toward a social approach, in which the objective is the integration with stable and decent jobs. This article analyzes how persons with disabilities enter the ordinary labor market by studying the factors that strengthen stability in that process. In particular, it analyzes the incentives to hire workers by means of Social Security contribution deductions, a wage cost-reducing measure, and studies whether or not reduced contributions affects the hiring of people with disabilities in stable positions, thus promoting the possibility of decent and stable jobs. We focus on people with disabilities entering the job market for the first time during the period 2004 to 2011, using the Continuous Sample of Working Histories Database for Spain and using as a control group people without disabilities. The results obtained show that reduced social security contributions constitute an incentive that effectively encourages the entry of workers with a disability into the labor market by means of stable employment.

The role of the Social Economy (SE) in society is increasingly acknowledged by social agents and institutions, especially in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Commitment to SE requires the support of quantitative measurement of its contribution to society from an aggregate perspective. The difficulty in specifying it in quantitative terms is related to the assessment of the contribution of SE’s differentiating and intrinsic values. These values contribute to the fight against some structural problems that persist in modern society in terms of unemployment, inequality, territorial imbalance, environmental problems and social exclusion that surpass the economic sphere and involve the contribution to social goals, social utility and social and territorial cohesion. Our objective is an assessment in quantitative terms, including an estimation, in monetary terms, of the specific contribution of Social Market Economy (SMkE) firms to society linked to their distinctive principles, and thus their behaviour, in comparison to traditional profit-oriented firms, used as a control group. We use impact analysis techniques, with a simulation exercise, by which SMkE entities “lose” their identity and behave like profit-oriented firms. The results obtained for Spain confirm the existence of differential behaviour that generates social value in several ways. In monetary terms, in 2017, SMkEs contributed 6,229 million Euros in benefits to Spanish society that would have been lost if SMkE entities had behaved like profit-oriented firms.