Does women’s employment enhance women’s citizenship?

ABSTRACT

The EU discourse on increasing female employment holds promise. The integration of women into the labour market supposedly supports economic growth, social cohesion, and citizenship. The question is, however, whether the expected consequences of female employment are consistent with reality. Using the EU discourse as a point of departure, this paper scrutinises the effects of female employment from a citizenship perspective in three European cities: Aalborg (Denmark), Leeds (England), and Bologna (Italy). Using survey data collected in the three cities, it quantitatively analyses whether employment counteracts poverty, supports social and political participation, and increases social trust. It also analyses whether there are spill-over effects from the different dimensions of citizenship; that is, whether poverty leads to social isolation, political apathy, and low levels of social trust. We find that unemployment is important for citizenship but that the differences between employed women and women outside the labour force are rather limited. We also find that the effect of a woman’s position in the vertical and horizontal division of labour is rather limited, and no spill-over effects from economic hardship on other dimensions of citizenship exist. What matters for citizenship are personal and family characteristics as well as the city of residence.

KEYWORDS:

• Female employment
• citizenship
• local welfare state

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Per H. Jensen is professor of Social Policy at Center for Comparative Welfare Studies (www.ccws.dk), Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published widely in the fields of comparative welfare state analysis, formal and informal work, elder care, comparative labor market analysis, early exit/retirement, and the sociology of family and gender relations.

Rasmus Juul Møberg is associate professor in Department of Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interests include comparative welfare studies, work-life balance, and female labour market participation.

Notes

1 Leeds: national figures.

2 Caution must be applied when analysing the results since the data are skewed. The sample contains an overrepresentation of highly educated and 50+ women (see Appendix). This especially becomes a problem if the data are subject to descriptive analysis. Our main interest, however, is to carry out regression analyses. In such cases, skewed data are less of a problem (Winship and Radbill 1994). Furthermore, the background information for constructing relevant weights are largely inadequate, since register-based information on age, education, and care responsibilities are rather crude or not available in all cities.