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1 – 10 of over 7000Colette Fagan and Helen Norman
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the social divisions in maternal employment patterns post‐childbirth, recorded by earlier studies have persisted for a later cohort…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the social divisions in maternal employment patterns post‐childbirth, recorded by earlier studies have persisted for a later cohort of mothers that had a pregnancy in the early 2000s, in the context of an expansion of childcare and other improvements in reconciliation measures.
Design/methodology/approach
Longitudinal data from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study are analysed using logistic regression.
Findings
It was found that mothers are more likely to be employed, and employed full‐time, when their child is aged three if they were employed during the pregnancy and resumed employment within nine months of the birth. The mothers' occupational class, ethnicity, household composition and the working hours of a partner also have independent associations with the probability of maternal employment once the child is aged three.
Research limitations/implications
The authors would expect these results to be modified – but not overturned – in a different national setting, for example where childcare services are more extensive or part‐time employment is less common.
Originality/value
These new longitudinal survey results for a recent cohort of mothers in the UK demonstrate that resumption of employment following maternity leave is pivotal for women's subsequent employment integration. Yet maternal employment trajectories remain shaped by social inequalities. Both results are important for informing debates about reconciliation policy for the pre‐school years, including monitoring the impact of the recession on the employment integration of women following childbirth.
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The purpose of this paper is to solve the puzzle of the disproportionately lower employment rate of mothers of toddlers with relation to the employment rate of mothers of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to solve the puzzle of the disproportionately lower employment rate of mothers of toddlers with relation to the employment rate of mothers of preschool and school-age children in Estonia.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on the Most Similar System Design and compares Estonia with Lithuania. The applied methods include inferential statistics and microsimulation techniques, employing the OECD Benefits and Wages Calculator, the OECD Family Support Calculator and EUROMOD – the European tax-benefit microsimulation model.
Findings
The comparison revealed that the overwhelming majority of the crucial aspects of socio-cultural, economic and institutional conditions were more favourable for maternal employment in Estonia than in Lithuania. This explains the higher maternal employment rates both for mothers of pre-schoolers and school-age children in Estonia. However, one particular element of the institutional context targeted to the mothers of toddlers – the unconditional parental benefit – had an entirely opposite character. This particular feature of the parental leave scheme was the only factor that could explain why the employment rate of mothers of toddlers is disproportionately lower than the employment rate of mothers of older children in Estonia and much lower than the employment of mothers of toddlers in Lithuania.
Originality/value
This study complements previous research by providing evidence on the relative importance of universal parental benefit schemes in the context of other country-specific conditions for maternal employment, including the availability of institutional childcare. Furthermore, the results presented show that childcare regime typologies, at least those that characterise Eastern European countries, should be more sensitive to children’s age.
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The aim of this paper is to study employment effects of workfare and training programs for lone mothers receiving means‐tested benefits in Germany.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to study employment effects of workfare and training programs for lone mothers receiving means‐tested benefits in Germany.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical analyses are based on a large‐scale administrative data set covering the entire population of unemployed means‐tested benefit recipients. A timing‐of‐events approach is used to control for possible selectivity in program entries.
Findings
Findings are that lone mothers particularly profit from participating in vocational training programs. It seems they can benefit from updating their job skills after having interrupted their employment for childcare. By contrast, workfare does not seem to be beneficial for those with young children. Workfare is especially intended to enhance participants' motivation to increase their job search efforts. The main reason lone mothers of young children have not been employed is however likely to be lack of childcare, rather than lack of motivation.
Practical implications
Lone mothers of young children are perhaps not an adequate focus group for workfare, and should be assigned there less often, and instead more frequently to skill training programs.
Originality/value
As of yet, very little research has investigated effects of training and workfare programs specifically for lone mothers in Germany. The findings from the present study can contribute to understanding whether lone mothers, who are strongly targeted by these programs despite facing employment obstacles on account of low levels of childcare provision, can actually profit from program participations.
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Pi-Shen Seet, Uma Jogulu, Helen Cripps and Mehran Nejati
This research focuses on the extent sharing economy transforms employability for women impacted by domestic and reproductive work. The authors explore the experience of mothers…
Abstract
Purpose
This research focuses on the extent sharing economy transforms employability for women impacted by domestic and reproductive work. The authors explore the experience of mothers, of how digital peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms can affect their self-perceived employability and skills deterioration by unlocking human capital through technology acceptance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a pragmatism-based approach incorporating using a single-case study research design with the Gioia methodology. It utilised a semi-structured telephone survey to collect data to explore the decisions around usage of a newly developed mobile P2P app, aiming to support employability among mothers. Analysis was conducted inductively using thematic analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Findings
The study finds that mothers experience high rates of continued labour market attachment on a casual or part-time basis, difficulty in juggling family and work, and high levels of concern both about future employment/entrepreneurial opportunities and expected stress in balancing dual roles of carer and earner. While mothers are interested in using new sharing economy technologies to reduce skills deterioration and improve signalling, the authors find that there were both technology and non-technology related barriers. These included trust and security, life-stage mismatch, time poverty and limitation of service offerings.
Research limitations/implications
This research was limited to mothers in one state in Australia and by the case study research design, the measurement model and the self-report nature of the data collection. Hence, the findings may lack generalisability in other contexts. It also limits the ability to make conclusions regarding causality.
Originality/value
This exploratory study contributes to research in the intersection between human resources (HR) and entrepreneurship by illustrating how sharing economy platforms can offer women a means to overcome the issues of signalling and skills deterioration in relation to aspects of human capital theory by developing new skills that may act as positive signals signal to potential employers or investors. Additionally, the social interactions between mothers, through technology adoption, can provide a basis for improving future self-employment or entrepreneurship and employability.
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Thomas P. Boje and Anders Ejrnæs
The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of different family policy systems in Europe and evaluate their impact on the employment strategy of mothers with care…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of different family policy systems in Europe and evaluate their impact on the employment strategy of mothers with care responsibilities for dependent children.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines a typology of family policy regimes in Europe – covering the 26 countries. A typology based on a cluster analysis of macro indicators of family policy – coverage of childcare, effective parental leave and spending on family policies. The cluster analysis is based on data from OECD family data base. Then follows an analysis of the impact of the different family policy regimes on mothers' employment strategies when they return into gainful employment, based on data from the European Social Survey, 2008.
Findings
The authors have identified four different family policy models: extensive family policy, long parental leave, family care, and cash for care. For each of the models, different strategies are found for take up of employment for mothers with dependent children.
Originality/value
The paper includes 26 European countries, thereby covering the East and Central Europe, which is not the case in most welfare typologies. Furthermore, the authors distinguish clearly in the analyses between the institutional dimension and the outcome – mothers' employment strategies.
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Uses data from 1994 International Social Survey Programme to examine how attitudes to maternal employment at different stages of child rearing vary across and within eight nations…
Abstract
Uses data from 1994 International Social Survey Programme to examine how attitudes to maternal employment at different stages of child rearing vary across and within eight nations in the European Union, UK, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Considers whether a mismatch exists between belief in a women’s right to work and the “traditional” family ideology. Highlights a north/south divide in attitude and differing welfare policies and gender‐role beliefs.
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This article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation and nuclear family households.
Design/methodology/approach
Japan currently has the highest ageing rate in the world at nearly 30%. Since the 1990s, employment flexibilization and women's labour market participation have proceeded in parallel, and the conservative family values of the patriarchy and gender division of labour that have provided intergenerational aid for care within households have been shrinking, by conducting a descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
Findings
This study identified that a conspicuous increase in part-time employment among mothers in both household types and a decrease by half in the working mother's population in three-generation households. These results suggest that the function of inter-generational assistance by multi-generation cohabitation, which was once thought to be effective in helping working mothers with younger children, is declining.
Originality/value
A study examining the transformation of mothers' employment behaviour differences between three-generation households and nuclear family households is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the research regarding the grandparents' caregiving, household types and mothers' employment.
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Deborah DeGraff, Deborah Levison and Mary Robison
The purpose of this paper is to explore associations between children's and mothers” work.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore associations between children's and mothers” work.
Design/methodology/approach
Brazilian household survey data are used to examine characteristics of children's and mothers' work in tandem.
Findings
Children are more likely to be in the labor force if their mothers are working, especially girls, younger children and rural children. There are strong connections between mothers' and children's employment characteristics, including industry and sector, location, commute times and whether paid. Employed children are more likely to work long hours if their mothers do, or if their mothers are not employed.
Practical implications
Connections between women's and children's work imply that changes in women's employment can change the work activities of their children. Policies and programs designed to influence women's labor force participation, such as micro‐credit programs, should consider their effects on children's time. Moreover, programs, laws, and international conventions that address only child labor ignore the family context of child work, limiting their potential impact.
Originality/value
The paper uses quantitative techniques and survey data to examine a topic usually investigated through small qualitative studies.
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In any attempt to build up a modern employment policy in a highly‐developed society there are several inter‐related modules. One of these is relevant participation by employees in…
Abstract
In any attempt to build up a modern employment policy in a highly‐developed society there are several inter‐related modules. One of these is relevant participation by employees in the decision‐making process; another relates to ownership of the business and the employees' stake in it. There are many more. One aspect of growing importance, one which until recently was not accepted as important but is increasingly asserting itself, is the position of women in society and, in particular, the role of women in the work force. Eventually this feature is destined to become one of the most important of all the aspects of employment and public attitudes towards it will come to be fundamentally modified. At present we are at the very beginning of this process of attitude‐changing and to this extent this is a new but absolutely‐essential field of action for the manager of human resources. It is another of these inescapable obligations which have considerably extended the field of responsibility of the trainer or the manpower change agent. We have already published several authoritative contributions in this topic area. One to which readers might care to refer was contained in our issue of March 1976, page 96, under the title of WOMEN AND WORK. We offer this present article for use as a starter session for in‐plant or college study and we shall add to it as the months go by. In May 1976 a conference was held at Brunei University under the title MOTHERS IN EMPLOYMENT: TRENDS AND ISSUES. This seminar produced a series of first‐class papers which have now been gathered together and published under the title of MOTHERS IN EMPLOYMENT. This 140 page booklet is available from Brunei University Management Programme, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex, price £1.95. We have selected it as the most suitable introduction to the topic available and in preparing this current article we have drawn heavily on it and quoted extensively and verbatim from it.
Patricia Gabaldon, Celia De Anca and Concepcion Galdón
The purpose of this paper is to investigate alternative measures to better understand and measure success for self-employed mothers in addition to the usual financial indicators…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate alternative measures to better understand and measure success for self-employed mothers in addition to the usual financial indicators.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study is a comparative analysis of time spent at work and undertaking childcare by female workers with children in Spain between 2009 and 2010, using a combination of descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis based on the Time-Use Survey 2009-2010.
Findings
The results of the paper indicate that self-employed working mothers tend to spend more time with their children when these are under the age of ten, and that they work longer hours than salaried mothers.
Research limitations/implications
This paper has some limitations due to the quantitative approach to secondary data. Further qualitative research could clarify some of the findings; moreover the study is based on Spain, so extending to other countries would help validate the results.
Social implications
Policy makers, in general – but more specifically in high unemployment scenarios – can facilitate self-employment for both men and women to reduce unemployment and to offer workers the prospect of a more balanced life.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the existing literature, which fosters a more holistic approach to the analysis of female-run ventures by measuring performance using not only economic indicators, but also personal achievements.
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