Educational attainment and gender differences in work-life balance for couples across Europe: a contextual perspective
Autor/in:
Kromydas, Theocharis
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 8-22
Inhalt: The current article aims to explain the interrelationships between the educational attainment of individuals living in households with heterosexual partners, their work–life balance (WLB) and the macro-economic climate of the country they live in, using data from the European Social Survey. WLB is a complex concept, as it is not only determined by factors related to someone’s employment or domestic work and childcare responsibilities, but also by decisions informed by personal experiences and circumstances, subjective perceptions and preferences. Moreover, in households with cohabiting partners, this decision-making process involves certain compromises where financial incentives, interests, gender and power dynamics play an important role. Since educational attainment is positively related to labour market outcomes, such as employment and wages, while at the same time more women are participating in education and the labour market, the gender conflict on the division of work and time within households intensifies and traditional gender roles are challenged. WLB is at the heart of this conflict operating as a mechanism through which division of work and time is reconciled on the individual and household level. Results from the current article reveal great heterogeneity between the 17 European countries examined. Perhaps surprisingly, educational attainment can have a detrimental effect on the WLB of spouses and cohabiting partners, especially for women whose level of WLB seems also more sensitive to fluctuations of the macro-economic climate of the country they live in. However, there is an indication that when an economy goes into recession, higher education has a cushioning effect on female’s WLB compared to relatively better economic times.
Beyond Sex/Work: Understanding Work and Identity of Female Sex Workers in South China
Autor/in:
Ding, Yu
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 95-103
Inhalt: While scholars and activists often advocate using the term ‘sex worker’ in preference to prostitute, in my research I found that female prostitutes in the Pearl River Delta area, south China, do not like to be addressed as such, and prefer the title xiaojie in Chinese. ‘Sex worker’ generalises the heterogeneity of meanings these women identify and attribute to what they do; it does not capture the complex cultural meanings involved in the term xiaojie. It is stigmatising in that what is exchanged within the transaction is less defined by sexual acts and more by a diversified range of activities. The women employ what is useful to them and infuse new meanings in it to construct gender images and identities to resist the sex worker stigma and to express their desires as rural-to-urban migrants. Using xiaojie becomes a destigmatising and gender tactic. I also found that the women discard the idea of finding alternative jobs partly because of the practical difficulty, and partly because they do not want to work (gongzuo) any more in the future. This study highlights the importance of exploring desire and agency to understand the lived experiences of this particular group of women.
Schlagwörter:China; China; woman; Prostitution; prostitution; Stigmatisierung; stigmatization; Gender; gender; Ostasien; Far East; South China; desire; destigmatisation; sex worker
"Mummy is in a call": digital technology and executive women's work-life balance
Autor/in:
Nagy, Beáta
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 72-80
Inhalt: Research findings confirm the contradictory impact of mobile technology on work–life balance, as these tools both guarantee greater flexibility and contribute to blurring boundaries between private and working spheres. Several articles have been published on women executives’ work–life balance in Western countries; however, their usage of mobile devices remained almost unexplored in the post-socialist region, where in the wake of the transformation not only the unquestioned neoliberal change of the corporate sector but also refamilisation took place. This article gives an overview on the issue of how women executives make use of mobile technology during their everyday activities in Hungary, where not only are the signs of ‘corporate colonization’ present, but also motherhood plays an important role. Based on twenty semi-structured interviews with Hungarian women in senior management positions carried out in 2014 and 2015, the article discusses the perceptions and narratives explained by these women. Results contribute to the ongoing debate on the paradoxical impacts of modern technology on work–life balance and its specificities in the post-socialist context.
Schlagwörter:woman; gender; Mutterschaft; motherhood; neue Technologie; new technology; Technologie; technology; Arbeit; labor; Führungsposition; executive position; Familie-Beruf; work-family balance; Ungarn; Hungary; Interview; interview; boundary management; executive women; technology use
SSOAR Kategorie:Berufsforschung, Berufssoziologie, Technikfolgenabschätzung, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
SSOAR Kategorie:Familiensoziologie, Sexualsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Erhebungstechniken und Analysetechniken der Sozialwissenschaften
Long-term care and gender equality: fuzzy-set ideal types of care regimes in Europe
Autor/in:
Bartha, Attila; Zentai, Violetta
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 92-102
Inhalt: Recent changes in the organization of long-term care have had controversial effects on gender inequality in Europe. In response to the challenges of ageing populations, almost all countries have adopted reform measures to secure the increasing resource needs for care, to ensure care services by different providers, to regulate the quality of services, and overall to recalibrate the work-life balance for men and women. These reforms are embedded in different family ideals of intergenerational ties and dependencies, divisions of responsibilities between state, market, family, and community actors, and backed by wider societal support to families to care for their elderly and disabled members. This article disentangles the different components of the notion of ‘(de)familialization’ which has become a crucial concept of care scholarship. We use a fuzzy-set ideal type analysis to investigate care policies and work-family reconciliation policies shaping long-term care regimes. We are making steps to reveal aggregate gender equality impacts of intermingling policy dynamics and also to relate the analysis to migrant care work effects. The results are explained in a four-pronged ideal type scheme to which European countries belong. While only Nordic and some West European continental countries are close to the double earner, supported carer ideal type, positive outliers prove that transformative gender relations in care can be construed not only in the richest and most generous welfare countries in Europe.
Schlagwörter:Europa; Europe; Pflege; caregiving; Familie; family; gender; Gleichheit; equality; Migrant; migrant; care regimes; familialization; fuzzy set ideal type analysis; long-term care
SSOAR Kategorie:Gesundheitspolitik, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
The transition to parenthood in the French and German speaking parts of Switzerland
Autor/in:
Zimmermann, Regula; LeGoff, Jean-Marie
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 35-45
Inhalt: After the first transition to parenthood, most couples adopt a gendered labor division, where mothers become main caregivers and fathers breadwinners of the family. By comparing two distinct language regions within one country, the present article explores how parents’ gendered labor division comes into existence and what role gendered culture and social policy play. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 23 German speaking and 73 French speaking participants from Switzerland. The results reveal that French speaking women and men presume an egalitarian labor division as parents. In German speaking regions, however, participants anticipate that mothers will become the main caregivers and fathers the breadwinners. It is shown that the labor market structure, which is in line with the male breadwinner norm, contributes to men's full-time employment, whereas mothers' labor market insertion is influenced by the acceptance of non-parental childcare and to a lesser extent by the offer of childcare facilities. Further, mothers experience more time conflicts than fathers, and the less mothers’ paid work is accepted, the more they suffer from feelings of guilt when being employed.
Schlagwörter:Schweiz; Switzerland; Familienpolitik; family policy; gender; Ungleichheit; inequality; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Arbeitsteilung; division of labor; Elternschaft; parenthood
SSOAR Kategorie:Familiensoziologie, Sexualsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Inhalt: In this article, we draw a parallel between equality of opportunity in educational transitions and equality of opportunity in academic careers. In both cases, many methodological problems can be ameliorated by the use of longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data. We illustrate this point by using Finnish full-population register data to follow the educational and academic careers of the 1964-1966 birth cohorts from birth to the present day. We show how the Finnish professoriate is highly selected both in terms of parental background and in terms of gender. Individuals of different backgrounds differ greatly in the likelihood of completing different educational and academic transitions, but much less in the age at which they make these transitions. By contrast, women’s academic careers differ from those of men both in terms of timing and in terms of rates, with women’s PhDs and full professorships seemingly delayed compared to those of men. We additionally show with the help of a 2015 cross-section of Finnish professors how such differences are easily overlooked in cross-sectional data.
Schlagwörter:Bildung; academic (female); gender; Akademikerin; education; Chancengleichheit; Hochschulbildung; academy; Gender; equality of rights; Akademie; Karriere; Finland; woman; Gleichberechtigung; Akademiker; equal opportunity; Finnland; career; university level of education; academic
SSOAR Kategorie:Wissenschaftssoziologie, Wissenschaftsforschung, Technikforschung, Techniksoziologie, Berufsforschung, Berufssoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Faith-based organisations as welfare providers in Brazil: the conflict over gender in cases of domestic violence
Autor/in:
Beecheno, Kim
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 7 (2019) 2, S 14-23
Inhalt: What does the growth of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in social welfare mean for women’s rights and gender equality, especially within advocacy services for women experiencing domestic violence? Through empirical research within a Catholic-based organisation providing welfare services to abused women in São Paulo, Brazil, this article argues that FBOs can negatively impact the provision of women's rights when conservative and patriarchal views towards gender and women’s roles in society are maintained. A heavily matrifocal perspective, where women’s identity and subjectivity are mediated through their normative roles as wives, mothers and carers of the family, appears to offer little possibility of change for abused women, who are encouraged to forgive violent husbands and question their own behaviour. Mediation between couples is promoted, undermining women's rights upheld through Brazil's domestic violence law (Lei Maria da Penha no 11.340). Furthermore, the focus of family preservation, supported by a patriarchal state, means that violence against women (VAW) appears to be subordinated to a focus on family violence and violence against children. In this case, faith-based involvement in social welfare rejects the feminist analysis of VAW as a gender-based problem, viewing it as a personal issue rather than a collective or political issue, making women responsible for the violence in their lives.
Inhalt: Healthcare has long been a gendered enterprise, with women taking responsibility for maintaining health and engaging with service providers. Universal healthcare provision notwithstanding, women nonetheless undertake a range of healthcare work, on their own account and on behalf of others, which remains largely invisible. As part of a multi-method comparative European study that looked at access to healthcare in diverse neighbourhoods from the point of view of people's own health priorities, the concept of "healthcare bricolage" describes the process of mobilizing resources and overcoming constraints to meet particular health needs. Bricolage mediates between different kinds of resources to meet particular challenges and describing these processes makes visible that work which has been unseen, over-looked and naturalised, as part of a gendered caring role. Drawing on 160 semi-structured interviews and a survey with 1,755 residents of highly diverse neighbourhoods in Germany, UK, Sweden and Portugal, this article illustrates the gendered nature of healthcare bricolage. The complex variations of women's bricolage within and beyond the public healthcare system show how gendered caring roles intersect with migration status and social class in the context of particular healthcare systems.
Making structural change with relational power: a gender analysis of faith-based community organizing
Autor/in:
Garlington, Sarah B.; Durham Bossaller, Margaret R.; Shadik, Jennifer A.; Shaw, Kerri A.
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 7 (2019) 2, S 24-32
Inhalt: This article presents research on faith-based community organizing in the US to examine how congregation members engage in structural change efforts related to marginalized populations. Examining the case of one organizing model, justice ministry, congregations focus on power defined through relationships, cultivated in informal spaces, and communicated through personal narrative (traditionally private, feminine spheres), and change is enacted by creating tension in public (traditionally masculine) spaces with decision-makers. A growing body of literature presents nuanced gender analyses of policy advocacy, social movements, and community change efforts both in terms of strategic models of action and revisiting our understanding of historical movements. We ask questions about how the expectations and work are constrained or facilitated by cultural expectations of gender roles and power dynamics. Examining the organizing model of justice ministry through a gender lens helps to understand how an emphasis on relational power (traditionally gendered as feminine) facilitates and strengthens the use of a range of tools, including publicly challenging authority (more frequently gendered as masculine). While the private/public, feminine/masculine dichotomy has severe limitations and risks oversimplification, the utility remains in helping name and challenge real power differentials based on gender.
Schlagwörter:Organisationen; organizations; Religion; religion; USA; United States of America; gender; Leistung; achievement; Analyse; analysis; Macht; power; Justiz; judiciary; Ministerium; ministry; faith-based community organizing; gender; justice ministry; power analysis; relational power; religion
SSOAR Kategorie:Religionssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie, Militärsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
