Women, lifelong learning and transitions into employment (original) (raw)
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Women, lifelong learning and employment
2004
This paper reports on research on the employment effects of lifelong learning for a cohort of British women. Responsibility for caring for children and other dependent family members continues to be borne mainly by women, and they frequently have spells out of paid employment as a consequence. Lifelong learning is often regarded as playing a key role in maintaining and enhancing the employability of women returners. It is argued that lifelong learning can prevent skills depreciation for women who have had long breaks from paid employment and that those who missed out on initial education may require lifelong learning in order to obtain essential basic skills To date, however, the evidence on whether lifelong learning really does have beneficial employment effects has been very sparse.
The Impact of Learning on Women's Labour Market Transitions
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2014
Women play an increasingly important role in the labour market and as wage earners. Moreover, in many countries, young women have outperformed men in terms of educational attainment and qualification. Still, women's human capital investment does not pay off as it does for men as they are still significantly disadvantaged on the labour market. Based on a qualitative empirical investigation with women in their mid-career, this article investigates the role of learning for women's labour market participation and career paths. Women's careers complexly intersect with role expectations, family needs, the career of the partner and anticipation of low returns of educational investment. This is typically reflected in discontinuous employment, part-time work and women's secondary wage earner position in the family. Furthermore, women qualified at the intermediate skills level are more likely to move horizontally in their career than vertically. Horizontal mobility thereby requires significant engagement with learning as the German labour market usually requires a formal qualification to realise a career change. Learning and further training thus become instrumental to facilitate and support women's career transitions, which are often aimed at reentering regular employment after longer periods of family-related interruptions and/or to remain qualified in jobs in the social, health and educational fields, all of which are female dominated. Ultimately, women's significant engagement with continuing learning is not primarily expected to support career advancement and vertical mobility, particularly as it can neither alter discontinuities of employment nor the Germanspecific nexus between welfare, family and education policies and the labour market. This challenges the lifelong learning rhetoric insofar as one key aim of lifelong learning policies is to support labour market inclusion and the mobility of disadvantaged groups.
Examining the potential for women returners to work in areas of high occupational gender segregation
2005
The aim of this project was to review the employment and earnings potential of women who return to employment after a period of caring for children or other family members. The report includes analysis of the literature and statistical data on women's employment histories, the kinds of jobs they do and what they are paid. It also looks at women's qualifications and skills and the way in which their employment reflects their skills and explores employers attitudes to women returners and the training opportunities available to them. Key Findings Women returners form a quarter of the female labour force in the UK. In 2005, mothers returning to work part-time were heavily concentrated in four occupations: elementary administration; sales and customer services; caring personal services and administration. These occupations are female dominated and have lower rates of pay in the UK compared with male-dominated occupations. Mothers returning to work full-time were found to work in a broader range of occupational areas than those returning part-time, including some of the ones listed above, but also other areas such as teaching and management. Women who gain a formal Level 2 (GCSE) or Level 3 (A-Level) equivalent qualification are far more likely to be in paid employment, compared with women who have not achieved these levels of qualification. Women returners tend to under-utilize their past training-e.g. scientific and technical training-when they take less skilled jobs for which they are over-qualified. Over-qualification of mothers is most notable among the caring occupations and sales and customer services. Returners who are currently working part-time experience an extra 16 percent loss of wages (per hour), given their characteristics. Full-time well-qualified returners have much higher wages and are in better-paid occupations than part-time returners. Women returners' lower rate of pay is likely to reflect three factors: oversupply of labour, poorer opportunities for training and support, and choosing an employer close to home. Women who return to full-time work are more likely to gain advancement and promotion than those who return to part-time work. Male-dominated jobs are more likely to have skills shortages. A number of maledominated occupations, notably the skilled trades and some construction occupations, had skills-shortages in ESS 2001. However, a number of important female-dominated occupations (notably health and social work professionals) also had skills-shortages. Skills shortages are partly due to the need for qualifications in certain occupations, notably science and technology professionals, skilled construction and building trades, and skilled metal and electrical trades. Recommendations Women returners remain a partially untapped workforce resource. Explicit and formal recognition that women returners and potential returners have been overlooked in UK training and skills policy will be important if policy makers are to succeed in making training and other means of skill-acquisition more accessible. Certain employment-related training programs have omitted the category of 'women returners' from the list of target groups. Additional education and training targeted at women returners could improve women's capacity to earn in the labour market. Incentives, funding and resources to address the UK's intermediate-level skill gaps can be directed in part to those working in occupational areas that have high maledominance. It may be desirable for training offered to workers aiming at these occupations to be gender-inclusive and age-inclusive as well as welcoming and encouraging those who do caring work. Mechanisms for improving the quality of part-time jobs need to be found. The diversification of part-time work and the adoption of genuinely flexible working practices need to be encouraged if women returners are to avoid occupational downgrading. Firms paying women wages that are below their potential productivity level would benefit from attempts at job redesign if the changes allow the workers to remain part-time but to use their existing skills better. Employers need to recognise that institutional cultures and embedded practices such as working overtime, working away from home, and irregular hours can serve as barriers to women and especially to women returners. The long-term employment trajectories of women returners could be improved by concerted efforts to achieve a more familyfriendly workplace culture across all sectors. Women themselves can be discouraged from occupational downgrading, but it is essential that childcare services, help with domestic work, and work-life balance policies in the workplace be put into place too. Otherwise women will tend to be seen as 'to blame for' or as 'choosing' the overall situation which results in them being overqualified. Skills shortages in specific occupations can in part be addressed through reducing the gender-segregation of the male-dominated occupations. The converse of maledomination of the occupations with high skills shortages is overcrowding in the femaledominated occupations. Gender segregation should be reduced in UK occupations through job redesign, retraining , a welcoming attitude to women joining in malestereotyped jobs, and a fresh attitude to flexible working hours and part-time working. Hard-to-Fill Vacancy SICSOC-Combined classification using SOC1 and SIC 92 SET-Science, Engineering and Technology Thus, hard-to-fill vacancies are a subset of all current vacancies. The hard-to-fill set of vacancies in turn has a subset which has become known as the skill-shortage vacancies. A ratio measures the proportion of skills-shortage vacancies by employment. See also 'Report Definitions and Abbreviations' at the beginning of this report.
European Sociological …, 2009
Women who have previously left the labour market to have children or to care for a family member represent a large proportion of the present and potential workforce. This article innovatively links data on women's education with employers' skill needs and market wage rates to map the different circumstances of women returners in the United Kingdom. We explore whether there is a clustering of women returners in low-wage occupations and how this group can be differentiated. The United Kingdom is a valuable case as it has one of the highest rates of part-time work in Europe. We find that women returners experience high levels of occupational segregation and that these patterns are intensified when they work part-time. Thus, when women returners work part-time, they have limited occupational choice. Rigidities in the design of full-and part-time jobs have led to many women opting for part-time jobs in occupational areas for which they are over-qualified. Additionally, we argue that UK women returners and potential returners have been overlooked in government and sector skill council training agendas. We conclude by commenting on the lack of diversification of part-time work and provide insights for policy makers with respect to the labour market, women returners and potential returners.
NBER WORKING PAPERS SERIES EDUCATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN
The more education, the less unemployment of women; this relationship is as strong as it is in the male labor force. The channel through which this relation arises is also the same, namely, labor turnover, almost half of which involves unemployment.
After Retrenchment: Labour Market Experiences of Women and Men
Australian Journal of Social Issues, 1987
Job loss in manufacturing industry has been a marked feature of the Australian economy over the last decade but little is known about the prospects for re-employment of workers who have been retrenched. This paper reports the results of a survey of the subsequent labour market experiences of 271 workers made redundant when a whitegoods plant was closed in December 1982 at Bankstown in Sydney's western suburbs. The retrenched workers were contacted twice, ten to twelve months apart and a response rate of 80 per cent was achieved. The paper compares the labour market experiences of retrenched women and men: Does the lower labour force participation rate of women in the population at large apply to women who have previously shown a strong commitment to the labour force through their stable employment history? The paper discusses. the factors which might affect retrenched women's response to unemployment, including institutional arrangements, a gender-based domestic division of labour and the nature of the jobs available to unskilled blue collar workers. This paper describes and attempts to explain the impact of job loss on established workers who were retrenched through a plant closure. The particular focus of the paper is on the subsequent labour market experiences of the retrenched women compared with those of the retrenched men. For the population as a whole the proportion of women who are employed or actively seeking work (i.e. labour force participants) is much lower than that of men. The labour force participation rate of women aged 15 years and over during 1983, for example, was 44 per cent compared with 76 per cent for men in the same age grouping. These differences are due to a range of institutional arrangements such as eligibility for unemployment benefits, a crude gender-based domestic division of labour, and occupational segregation of the labour market, which affect adversely women's labour force participation, especially among young women seeking their first job or women re-entering the labour force after a long absence. But it is not known whether these Richard Curtain is a principal executive officer with the Heavy Engineering Board with responsibilities for skills upgrading and retrenchment assistance. Prior to this position he was with the Bureau of Labour Market Research. The analysis on which this paper is based was conducted while the author was a postdoctoral fellow in the
Can we release the brake on the career re-entry of mothers? A UK perspective
2020
While there are many reasons for career inequalities between men and women, becoming a mother is one of the most important life events affecting the career paths of women. In particular, decisions on whether, when and how mothers return to work have a significant influence on their later career development. Therefore, in this article, we review the literature regarding challenges and determinants of mothers' return to work after a child-related career break. Subsequently, we compare the context of returning mothers in the UK and India and present the legal, infrastructural and cultural specificities of both countries to better understand the influence of context on decision making of mothers. Building on this, we turn toward mechanisms to reduce barriers of re-entry and provide recommendations how to support the transition of mothers back to work.