Preferences or institutions? Work—family life opportunities in seven European countries (original) (raw)

The Impact of Institutions on Motherhood and Work

Child Working Papers, 2007

In this paper, we aim to explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on the woman's joint decisions of working and having children, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We include in the analysis, beyond personal characteristics, variables related to the childcare system, parental leave arrangements, and labour market flexibility. Results

Social Policies and Employment of Married Women in Europe

2006

The analysis of the temporal and cross-country patterns of women's labour market participation and fertility shows how several factors affect the compatibility between childrearing and work (labour market characteristics, social services, and family wealth). The most significant factors which facilitate reconciliation of childrearing and work are the opportunities for part-time arrangements, the availability of childcare and parental leave options. The combination of these options seems to allow different solutions for combining work with having children. Empirical evidence and comparative results show that it is more difficult to combine work and having children in Southern Europe than in the rest of Europe.

Preference family work

Diversity characterizes fertility, family and work patterns in Europe: there are marked differences between nations in terms of childbearing, family and work preferences. In the year 2000 the British sociologist Catherine Hakim published a new theory based on preferences for paid work and family. The preference theory tries to explain and predict female preferences for work in the labour market and family. It works with elements such as values and decisions at both a micro-level and the economic and institutional macro-context, in which preferences are seen to be the main determinant of choices that people make in their lives. Lifestyle preferences are understood as causal factors, which influence the models of work and family. Preference theory works with a classification of life-style preferences for family and work: "work-oriented preferences", "adaptive preferences" and "family-oriented preferences". Preference theory was empirically tested on female populations in some European countries including the Czech Republic. Using a more recent survey (carried out in 2011 in the Czech Republic) on men and women, we used the preference theory in order to answer the following questions: a) What is the distribution of different life-style preferences in the Czech Republic in male and female populations? b) family, care and work in europe: an issue of gender?

Married women's employment over the life course: Attitudes in cross-national perspective

Soc. F., 1999

We analyze survey data from 23, largely industrialized countries onattitudes toward married women's employment atfour stages ofthefamily life course. Despite general consensus between countries, cluster andcorrespondence analyses show thatthe nations represent three distinct patterns of attitudes. There is only mixed support for the hypothesis thatpublic opinion conforms tostate welfare regime type. Instead, normative beliefs reflect both ageneral dimension ofstructural andcultural factors facilitating female labor force participation and a life course dimension specific to maternal employment. Men and women largely agree, but gender differences affect cluster membership fora fewcountries. Systematic analysis of a large number of countries helps to testthelimits ofcomparative typologies and toidentify anomalous cases for closer study. Women around the globe face similar problems reconciling paid work and domestic responsibilities (Boh, Sgritta & Sussman 1989; Frankel 1996; Moen 1992; Stockman, Bonney& Sheng 1995). Compared with other women, mothers of children,particularlyyoung children, are less likely to be employed. When they do work for pay, they are less likely to work full-time. Ideologies assigning primary childcare responsibility to women prevail in most cultures (Barry& Paxson 1971). In advanced industrial societies, the organization ofwork(e.g., fixed employment schedules) and its rewards (e.g., gender paygaps) poseobstacles and *This research wassupported by a grantfrom the

Work-to-family enrichment and gender inequalities in eight European countries

The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2017

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The impact of work-family policies on women's employment: a review of research from OECD countries

All industrialized countries, as well as many developing and transition countries, have policies in place to support work-family reconciliation such as care-related leaves, policies that increase the quality or availability of flexible and alternative work arrangements, and childcare supports. While work-family policies share common elements across borders, the extent and nature of supports vary widely across countries. This cross-national diversity in policies has supported a substantial body of research on the effect of different policy designs on women's labor market outcomes and, increasingly, on men's take-up of work-family provisions. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of this research and to draw out implications in terms of policy designs that seem to maximize women's labor force participation, narrow the gender gap in earnings, and increase men's participation in caregiving at home. The paper reviews the research literature on leave policies, flexible and/or alternative work arrangements and childcare supports, and highlights the implications of policy designs for male take-up. The paper then discusses the growing literature on adverse and unintended consequences of work-family policies for gender equality and concludes by highlighting gaps in current knowledge.