Development of Culture, Welfare States and Women's Employment in Europe

Citation

McPherson, M. (2005), "Development of Culture, Welfare States and Women's Employment in Europe", Women in Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 5, pp. 379-382. https://doi.org/10.1108/09649420510609212

Birgit Pfau‐Effinger is a sociologist at the University of Hamburg in Germany. Her aim in this book is to introduce and examine a new theory to explain cross‐national differences in how couples, but particularly women, manage the relationship between their family responsibilities and paid employment in the labour market. To do this she compares changes in the situation in three European countries: Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, from the 1950s to 2000.

The models of family and employment she traces are from a single male breadwinner and female full‐time homemaker model through to a dual breadwinner model, with variations in between, the most common being the full‐time male/part‐time female model of labour force participation.

Previous comparative studies of cross‐national differences in the preferred or actual models of combining paid work and unpaid family responsibilities have focussed on differences in the social institutions of the countries, particularly the welfare state, but also the labour market and the family. Pfau‐Effinger's contribution in this study is to look beyond social institutions to deep‐rooted historical differences in cultural ideas about family: understandings, norms and ideals of motherhood, childhood, gender division of labour and family. The role of social institutions is not ignored, but acknowledged as a further contributing factor, through its relationship with the cultural situation in each country.

The issue of work‐life balance is currently on the agenda in the UK and other western industrialised nations. The issue has emerged along with the increasing labour force participation of women with children and the increasing ideology of gender equality, together with transformation in the labour market from an agrarian society, then to an industrialised society, and now to a knowledge‐based and service‐centred economy. While these broad trends apply across European and other western societies, Pfau‐Effinger's study points to cross‐national differences in this transformation in models of the relationship between individual behaviour in relation to the institutions of the labour market and the family.

Pfau‐Effinger begins this book with an outline of the theoretical approaches to international differences in women's labour force participation, from which she then constructs a theoretical framework for a cross‐national comparison and designs an empirical analysis to test these theories. The next three chapters present the findings for each of the three countries in her analysis. Using Pfau‐Effinger's terminology, for Germany the change over the period 1950‐2000 has been from the full‐time housewife model to the part‐time carer model of the family. For The Netherlands the change has been from the same full‐time housewife model to an egalitarian, family‐oriented model. For Finland the change has been from the family economic model to the dual breadwinner model.

These different trajectories of gender arrangements and labour market integration are then drawn together to draw conclusions about the respective roles of culture and social institutions. Pfau‐Effinger concludes that cultural differences are the driver, and institutional changes follow, with a time lag. Individual action, such as through the women's movement, is the mediator to bring about institutional change.

One of the key points emerging from this book is that part‐time work rather than total disengagement from the labour force is a crucial demarcator of contemporary difference in cross‐national models of work and family. The other crucial factor differentiating contemporary models cross‐nationally identified by Pfau‐Effinger is the role of the bourgeoisie.

Pfau‐Effinger describes the transformation in Germany as from the single breadwinner family model of man in full‐time paid work and woman as full‐time carer and homemaker, to the part‐time carer model of the male full‐time breadwinner and women part‐time in the labour force and part‐time carer/homemaker.

The Netherlands started from a similar single male breadwinner family model, but has evolved into a more egalitarian model, which is also focussed around women in part‐time work. However, in the Netherlands, there is also a greater movement of men into part‐time work. Pfau‐Effinger calls this a “dual breadwinner/dual carer model” where both men and women share both paid and unpaid family work equally. After a time lag, the state instituted changes in the welfare state based on this change in family model.

The differences between Germany and the Netherlands are that the Netherlands has a long tradition of gender equality that Germany does not have and that cultural change in the family has not been met with institutional change in the welfare state based on the new model of paid and unpaid work within the family.

The Finnish situation is most different in that it did not start from the single breadwinner model. According to Pfau‐Effinger, women with children in Finland have always engaged in full‐time paid work. She attributes this to the lack of emergence of a bourgeoisie and a different culture of family, motherhood and childhood. The Finnish trajectory was from an agrarian family‐based economy to an egalitarian dual breadwinner model with public childcare.

However, these models are ideals that are not necessarily actualised. For example, while almost four out of five women in the Netherlands state a preference for part‐time work, in reality just over one in five are in part‐time work. Over half are not employed at all, and more are working full‐time than want to. This suggests the need for social policy and workplace change to enable women who want to work part‐time to do so. At the moment a large amount of willing female labour productivity is being lost due to social policies and workplace cultures not having adjusted to the cultural change in the family model. A further disjunction apparent in the Netherlands is that while many men support an egalitarian dual worker/dual part‐time carer model, and while they have a higher rate of part‐time work than Germany or Finland, there is still unmet need for part‐time work for men.

Rasmussen et al. (2004) compared trends in part‐time work in New Zealand, the Netherlands and Denmark. Their findings for Denmark were similar to those Pfau‐Effinger found in Finland – women in full‐time rather than part‐time work – which they could not explain from the social institutional differences. Pfau‐Effinger's theory of the underlying role of cultural norms around family and equality would be a valid explanation. The findings for New Zealand showed high levels of part‐time work, but at low pay and poor conditions, i.e. not quality part‐time work at senior levels. Similar findings have been found in the UK. These findings indicate that institutional change in the UK and New Zealand has not yet caught up with cultural change in the family and gender roles.

There is now a body of research that suggests that for employers and governments that want to raise productivity by attracting and retaining the skills and experience of women they need to provide strong incentives around quality part‐time work at senior levels, the ability to transition in and out of part‐time and full‐time status, with pay and conditions on the same level as full‐time workers. For those countries with a culture of family and motherhood closer to the Finnish and Danish model, social provision or funding of quality childcare for women in full‐time work is more likely to be acceptable than for countries like Germany and the Netherlands where childcare is still seen as best provided privately within the family. For countries such as the US, New Zealand and Australia with a high sense of gender equality, but less cultural support for state childcare than the Scandinavian countries, government and workplace support for part‐time work for men and women, as in the Netherlands, is most likely to be successful. The UK at the moment is closer to the German model, despite a more developed welfare state, as the institutional framework has not moved to meet the cultural change in the family.

In conclusion, I find Pfau‐Egginger's thesis engaging and substantiated within the parameters of the three European countries analysed. This book makes a useful new contribution to understanding the complex and interrelated factors that influence individual decisions around models of combining paid and unpaid work in twenty‐first century western societies. It would be interesting to see this analysis extended to countries outside Europe, such as the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries all originated from the same Anglo‐Saxon culture, but have developed different social institutions, and different models of combining paid work and family responsibilities.

The book is well structured and the ideas clearly presented. In terms of the presentation and style of this book, my main quibble is that while there are few tables or graphs presenting data, those graphs that are presented contain an overload of information and are hard to read.