TOWARDS THE UNIVERSAL CARE COURSE MODEL

ABSTRACT

The principle aim is to analyse care policies and mothers' employment patterns in Austria in comparison with The Netherlands and Sweden. While Sweden fosters a Universal Breadwinner Model, Austrian policies set incentives for mothers to organize private care for their children for a relatively long period of time, similar to the Caregiver Parity model. The Netherlands, approaching the Universal Caregiver model, support part-time integration into the labour market, combined with private part-time caring facilities for the children. The cross-national comparative approach has been adopted throughout the description of care policies and the data analysis, using the European Social Survey. Drawing on the strong cross-national differences in policies and employment patterns, we outline the main principles of a Universal Care Course (UCC). The model addresses questions about how to achieve the ideal of a smooth transition between work and care in a gender-sensitive way.

Keywords:

• care
• policies
• employment
• Austria
• cross-national comparison

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for research support under the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission (WORKCARE-project, CIT5-028361, http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/research/nec/workcare/) that have made the scope and depth of this research possible. We would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions.