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ABSTRACT
Women with care responsibilities tend to reduce their labour market activity and to work part time, even if there are cross-national differences. Empirical research often analyses this separately for childcare and elderly care, and studies are usually limited to Western societies. This article aims to explore to what extent women’s care responsibilities for children and older people impact on women’s labour market integration and how this impact differs in the context of different welfare states in Europe and Asia. The analysis is based on data from a new comparative survey for four cities (Jyväskylä, Hamburg, Bologna and Hsinchu) in four countries (Finland, Germany, Italy and Taiwan). While socio-economic and demographic factors (age, education, marital status, health, financial difficulty and cultural orientation) are considered, multinomial regression reveals that, concerning childcare, the differences are greater within Europe than between the European countries and the Asian welfare state included in the study. Moreover, it turns out that there is no association between caring for older relatives and female employment in any of the four societies. This study demonstrates that the impact of different types of care responsibilities on women’s employment shows different directions and conditions in the context of different welfare states.
Acknowledgements
The project was coordinated by Prof. Per H. Jensen (Professor at the University of Aalborg, Denmark). Special thanks go to Dr Chen-Yun Pu (Associate Professor, Institute of Public Health, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan) for her assistance in statistical analysis.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Yueh-Ching Chou is Professor in the Institute of Health and Welfare Policy at the National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the reconciliation between paid work and unpaid caring among mothers of adult children with ID.
Birgit Pfau-Effinger is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany and professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. Her research focuses on cross-national differences in the development paths of the cultural and institutional context of the work–employment relationship, and how cultural and institutions together impact on women’s employment and care.
Teppo Kröger is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests include comparative welfare studies, work–family reconciliation, ageing, disability, childhood and care.
Costanzo Ranci is Professor in Economic Sociology in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Polytechnic of Milan, Italy. His research focuses on comparative welfare studies, new social risks and new configurations of inequality across Europe, long-term care and childcare policies.
Notes
* Yueh-Ching Chou designed the study, analysed the data and wrote the paper; Birgit Pfau-Effinger designed the study and assisted in writing; Teppo Kröger assisted in discussion, writing and revising and Costanzo Ranci assisted in discussion, writing and revising.
1 The project ‘Impact of Local Welfare Systems on Female Labour Force Participation and Social Cohesion’ (FLOWS) was a research project funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission in 2011–2014, led by Professor Per H. Jensen from Aalborg University.