Search results

Neoliberal structural adjustment policies (SAPS) have been criticized as having negative effects on women's employment. An analysis of several Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s suggests that differences in SAP contribute to differences in the growth of women's relative employment. Countries with less orthodox adjustment policies appear to have had greater growth in women's relative employment than countries with more orthodox policies. This pattern is illustrated with reference to specific countries and is tested for generality using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, incorporating data from all Latin American countries from which suitable data are available.

Purpose – This chapter examines how gender, parenthood, and partner's employment are related to individual's employment patterns, analyzing paid work at individual and household levels.

Methodology/approach – Analyses use individual-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) wave 5 for 19 countries, for adults aged 25–45. We use logistic regression and a two-stage Heckman sample selection correction procedure to estimate the effects of gender and parenthood on the probabilities of employment and full-time employment.

Findings – The variation between mothers and childless women is larger than that between childless men and childless women; differences in women's employment patterns are driven by gendered parenthood, controlling for women's human capital, partnered status and household income. Fathers and mothers' employment hours in the same household vary cross-nationally.

Mothers' employment behaviors can identify important differences in the strategies countries have pursued to balance work and family life.

Research implications – Important differences between childless women and mothers exist; employment analyses need to recognize the variation in employment hours among women, and how women's hours are related to partners' hours. Further research should consider factors that shape employment cross-nationally, as well as how these relate to differences in wages and occupational gender segregation.

Practical implications – Employment choices of women and mothers must be understood in terms of employment hours, not simply employment, and within the context of partners' employment.

Originality/value of paper – Our chapter clarifies the wide dispersion of employment hours across countries – and how men's and women's employment hours are linked and related to parenthood.

The Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986, requires all private sector employers in Australia with more than 100 employees to report annually on programmes they have developed to improve women′s employment opportunities. A criterion sampling approach was used to identify organizations whose public reports to the Affirmative Action Agency in 1992, contained at least some evidence of affirmative action programme development. There were 288 organizations identified in this way. The employment profiles of these 288 organizations for the period 1991‐1993 are compared with a random sample of another 288 organizations reporting to the agency over the same period. There are no clear conclusions which can be drawn from the employment profiles. What does emerge from the analysis is that simple quantitative measures of the effects of affirmative action are clearly inadequate to capture women′s employment experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of the Saudi employment programme “Nitaqat” in addressing institutional barriers to women’s employment in the Saudi private sector. The paper has a particular focus on the perspectives of unemployed women as the intended recipients of increased employment opportunities.

This paper adopts a qualitative approach, drawing on findings from face-to-face interviews conducted with two groups of stakeholders, government officials and unemployed Saudi women.

Four key findings are identified. First, the considerable cultural and regulatory barriers of a conservative society are resilient impediments to the success of Saudi employment policy. Second, discrimination against women is endemic in the Saudi society; however, it is largely unrecognised within the Saudi culture and often accepted by women themselves. Third, due to government regulations, cultural constraints and the gendered educational system, the private sector contributes to sustaining labour market segmentation through discriminatory practices. Finally, while a positive change is taking place in Saudi Arabia regarding women’s employment, it is incremental and uneven.

This paper provides new insights into the institutional barriers related to the labour force participation of Saudi women from the perspective of Saudi women themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the interplay between individual women’s gender role attitudes, having young children at home, as well as the country-context characterized by gender egalitarianism and public childcare support, relates to women’s working hours in 23 European countries.

This study presents results of multilevel regression analyses of data from the European Social Survey (Round 2). These micro-level data on 23 European countries were combined with country-level measures on gender traditionalism and childcare expenditure.

The authors found that the negative association between having young children at home and women’s working hours is stronger for women with traditional gender role attitudes compared to women with egalitarian attitudes. The gap in working hours between women with and without young children at home was smaller in countries in which the population holds egalitarian gender role attitudes and in countries with extensive public childcare support. Furthermore, it was found that the gap in employment hours between mothers with traditional or egalitarian attitudes was largest in countries with limited public childcare support.

Policy makers should take note that women’s employment decisions are not dependent on human capital and household-composition factors alone, but that gender role attitudes matter as well. The authors could not find evidence of the inequality in employment between women with different gender role attitudes being exacerbated in association with childcare support.

The originality of this study lies in the combined (rather than separate) analysis of how countries’ social policies (childcare services) and countries’ attitudes (gender traditionalism) interact with individual gender role attitudes to shape cross-national variation in women’s working hours.

Purpose. The purpose of this chapter is to determine the role of women cooperatives as an employment policy in Turkey. In this context, the aim is to investigate the effects of women’s cooperatives movement on the social and economic development and female participation within the labor force.

Method. In this chapter, the importance of cooperatives in the realization of economic development has been evaluated more qualitatively. The history of Turkish cooperatives has been briefly emphasized and the impact of women’s cooperatives on sustainable development goals (SDG) has been evaluated through a systematic literature review.

Results. After reviewing the literature and evaluating the samples of women’s cooperatives in Turkey with the sustainable development framework goals, it has been determined that cooperatives are an opportunity for the employment of women. It has been seen that women cooperatives are a contribution to the SDGs with their structure and action. In this respect, it can be said that women’s cooperatives can be regarded as an effective policy for increasing women’s employment in regions with traditional labor market structures.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

Reviews the positive role of the state in promoting women’s employment since the founding of Communist China in 1949. Identifies patterns of gender inequality which exist throughout the process of employment such as recruitment and retirement. Against this backcloth, analyses major reasons for the occurrence of this gender discrimination, which range from inadequate social security for childbearing and ineffective legislative monitoring mechanisms to gender bias in the employment legislation itself. Concludes that recent radical economic and social reforms in China have disrupted the context within which a level of equal opportunity has been achieved in the past few decades and demands a new legal framework under which greater equality between men and women in employment can be achieved.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that gender research is crucial to understanding post‐socialist transformations and wider changes in social life. Focused on employment experiences and gender identities of two generations of Bulgarian women, it aims to highlight the complex intertwining of social structure and individual agency and to point out how processes of continuity and change constitute the post‐socialist transformation and individual life journeys.

Informed by feminist analyses of gender and citizenship, generation theory and qualitative interviews, the paper employs the notion of gender imaginaries in comparing continuity and change in gender policy and individual experiences.

The paper argues that significant changes occurred after 1989 in the ways official gender imaginaries were constructed through law, policy, and public discourses. In comparison to this, individual women's gender imaginaries entailed not only change but also sustained attachment to paid work, rejection of domesticity, and continued feelings of gender equality. This suggests that stable and often unquestioned notions of gender had a significant role for individual imaginaries. In addition to this, some of the most considerable changes were manifested in the notions of risk and uncertainty, which have become central aspects of the post‐socialist gender imaginary, particularly in relation to paid work.

The paper engages in a comparison of employment experiences of two generations of women thus directing its enquiry to the combination of individuals' agency in crafting one's life journey and the constraints of social structures and existing gender inequalities. Thus, transformations in individual lived lives of women are seen as interrelated with social change and historic location.

The accepted wisdom is that Northern Ireland is a traditional society within which women’s primary role is defined as homemaker and mother. Examines data on the labour market participation of women in Northern Ireland, drawing comparisons with the UK, the Republic of Ireland and the European Union. Examines four hypotheses as possible explanations for mothers continuing in paid employment. Concludes that, despite living in a society seemingly more traditional than that in many other European Union countries, mothers of young children in Northern Ireland may be more likely to be in employment because they can call on a network of family support to provide informal child care.