Gender equality and family changes in the work–family culture in Southern Europe¹

1 Authors conceived of the idea, collected the literature, the references, and the data, and wrote the paper together. In particular, Almudena Moreno Minguez wrote part 3 and Isabella Crespi wrote part 4. The introduction, part 2 and conclusions were written together.

ABSTRACT

The wider context of the trade-off between work and family is not just a matter of changing preferences. The focus of the literature in this area has been strongly concerned with the identification of factors promoting high levels of female employment than with the location of policy determinants of cross-national fertility variation. Work–family reconciliation is considered as a political action that gives quite limited and unstable support to encourage women’s labour market participation, this results in the poor development of external services and in fewer benefits for women, who have to undertake multiple roles inside and outside the family. The Southern European countries (SEC) model take a specific family-oriented approach to work–family reconciliation. They are family-oriented in that they entrust the family with more responsibilities that in other countries and take a conservative/corporatist-family-oriented approach to work–family reconciliation. The key role and the interconnection between fertility and employment among women, as well as the influence of the gender system and, on the whole, of the welfare system depend on the specific culture of different countries. Based on these theoretical premises, this paper reviews the academic discussion of the meaning of work–family balance concept in the cultural context of SEC from a comparative perspective, taking in account the gender equality debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender equality
• family policies
• work–family balance
• cultural dimensions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Almudena Moreno Minguez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1839-0508

Isabella Crespi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9443-8385

Notes on contributors

Almudena Moreno Minguez has a PhD in Sociology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. She is a professor in Sociology at the University of Valladolid (Spain). She is a specialist in family issues, youth, Welfare State, public policies and comparative studies. She was visiting researcher at the Universities of Oxford (United Kingdom), McGill (Canada), Göteborg (Sweden), Stirling (United Kingdom), Torino (Italy) and Chicago (USA). She has taken part in scientific committees and European projects on gender equality policies and youth. She is now member of the Advisory Board of ESA RN13 Sociology of Families and Intimate Lives. Her research work has been recognized with the International Award for Young Sociologists (International Sociological Association). She has published numerous articles in prestigious international journals as well as several books.

Isabella Crespi is associate professor in Family sociology and Cultural sociology at the Faculty of Education, University of Macerata, Italy. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology and Methodology of research (Catholic University of Milan). She has been coordinator of the ESA RN13 Sociology of Families and Intimate Lives (2013–2017) and she is now member of the Advisory Board. Her current research activities include studies about family and migration; gender equality in European social policies and multicultural families. Her recent publications include: Crespi, I. (2016). Living in multicultural families: Education, values and relationships in a globalized society. In (a cura di) R. DeLuigi, & F. Stara (Eds.), Trust and conflict in intercultural processes. Experiences, practices and reflections (pp. 137–152). Macerata: Eum; Crespi, I., & Moreno Minguez, A. (2017). Work and family cultures: Dynamics of family change in Southern Europe. In (a cura di) B. Brandth, S. Halrynjo, & E. Kvande (Eds.), Work–family dynamics. Competing logics of regulation, economy and morals (pp. 79–102). Oxford: Routledge.

Notes

1 Authors conceived of the idea, collected the literature, the references, and the data, and wrote the paper together. In particular, Almudena Moreno Minguez wrote part 3 and Isabella Crespi wrote part 4. The introduction, part 2 and conclusions were written together.

1 See website http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database

2 The gender employment gap is defined as the difference between the employment rates of men and women aged 20–64. The employment rate is calculated by dividing the number of persons aged 20–64 in employment by the total population of the same age group. The indicator is based on the EU Labour Force Survey.

3 The gender gap in part-time employment is defined as the difference between the share of part-time employment in total employment of women and men aged 20–64. The indicator is based on the EU Labour Force Survey.

4 As a standard of comparison, Hantrais (2002, 2004) has recently suggested a very interesting type of relationship between the family and the State. The ensuing classification shows the effects of de-familisation produced by various national family policies. De-familisation defines the degree of independence from family and kinship networks that citizens enjoy thanks to national welfare measures. This approach reveals that there is still much ambiguity in Europe with regards to the institution of the family (Prandini, 2006, p. 93).

5 The general family support model is based on the presumption that the wife has the primary responsibility for caring and reproductive work within the family and enters paid work on a temporary basis as a secondary earner. In contrast, the dual-earner support model encourages women’s labour force participation by enabling parents, men as well as women, to combine parenthood with paid work and by attempting to create the conditions for a redistribution of caring work within the family. Countries where neither of the above two policy models is predominant would appear to have chosen to allow market forces to significantly shape gender relations, and these countries are consequently characterized as having a market oriented gender policy model.

6 See website www.regus.survey.com