Creating gender egalitarian societies: An agenda for reform

Politics and Society

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 313-349

  Gornick, Janet C ^a,b   Meyers, Marcia K ^c,d  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^b Luxembourg Income Study ^*

^c UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^d West Coast Poverty Center

Author keywords

Care giving; Divisions of labor; Employment; Gender equality

Indexed keywords

EID: 49849092636     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329208320562     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (42)

1. There are many terms in circulation that are intended to encompass these policies-including "family-friendly policies," "woman-friendly policies," and "worklife policies." We prefer the term "work-family reconciliation policies," as it is both precise and inclusive. Thus, we use that term here and in our other work, often shortened to "work-family policies."
2. There is no universally agreed-upon group of "industrialized" or "developed" countries, although these terms are widely used to refer to the highest-income countries in the world, generally captured by GDP per capita. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the OECD)-an organization of countries with "democratic governments and market economies"-was founded in 1961 by a group of twenty countries, including eighteen European countries and Canada and the United States. Throughout this article, we concentrate our analyses and policy recommendations on these approximately twenty countries, and we refer to them interchangeably as the "rich," "high-income," "industrialized," or "OECD" countries. In later years, the OECD added ten more countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and Eastern European countries. While a number of these countries have employment patterns and policy configurations that resemble those in the original twenty, some remain somewhat distinct. So, when we refer to "the OECD countries," we mean, for the most part, the original founding group of twenty.
3. Although we refer throughout this article to the birth and rearing of children, our argument is intended to include care for adopted children. Issues of gender equality are also particularly acute in the case of single-parent families in which one parent (usually the father) has opted out or been forced out as an economic and care provider. With same-sex couples, there are not the same issues of gendered expectations, yet such families also struggle with balancing work and family obligations.
4. Suzanne M. Bianchi, " Maternal Employment and Time with Children: Dramatic Change or Surprising Continuity? " Demography 37, no. 4 (2000). 401-14.
5. Eugene Smolensky and Jennifer A. Gootman, eds., Working Families and Growing Kids: Caring for Children and Adolescents (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003). 99-177.
6. Trudie Knijn and Monique Kremer, " Gender and the Caring Dimension of Welfare States: Towards Inclusive Citizenship, " Social Politics 4, no. 3 (1997). 328-62.
7. Rosemary Crompton, " Discussion and Conclusions," in Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, ed. R. Crompton, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 202-03.
8. In both the United States and some Southern European countries, other family members provide unpaid child care labor, particularly for young children. Although many observers suggest that this female-dominated "kith-and- kin" care is a viable alternative to parental or substitute care, it is becoming less feasible with increases in women's employment rates.
9. In the European literature on the earner-caregiver society and the associated policy packages, substitute child care often gets less attention than measures freeing up parents' time. However, it is clear that for many European feminists and welfare-state scholars, the state's commitment to providing or financing quality child care is taken as a given. For example, Anne-Lise Ellingsaeter, writing about the "Norwegian worker-caregiver model," describes the core policy package, which includes gender-egalitarian family leave, and the right to reduced-hour work. To that, she adds: "The other main policy measure is access to high-quality public child care. Public daycare plays an important part in the everyday life of parents." See Anne-Lise Ellingsaeter, " Dual Breadwinners Between State and Market " in Crompton, Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment, 44.
10. The earner-caregiver model has attracted sustained attention in Europe in recent years, especially among feminist welfare-state scholars (e.g., Ruth Lister and Jane Lewis in the United Kingdom, Birgit Pfau-Effinger in Germany, Anne-Lisa Ellingsæter in Norway, and Diane Sainsbury in Sweden) and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. See, for example, Nancy Fraser's call for men to become "like women are now" (Nancy Fraser, " After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State, " Political Theory 22, no. 4 [ 1994 ]: 591-618). American scholars have addressed a number of related concerns. There are large and excellent literatures on the "costs of motherhood" (for a review, see Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued [ New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001 ]); on the determinants of gender differences in unpaid work in the home (see, for example, Julie Brines, " Economic Dependency, Gender, and the Division of Labor at Home, " American Journal of Sociology 100, no. 3 [ 1994 ]: 652-88 ; Theodore N. Greenstein, " Economic Dependence, Gender, and the Division of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension, " Journal of Marriage and the Family 62, no. 2 [ 2000 ]: 322-35 ; and Harriet B. Presser, " Employment Schedules Among Dual-Earner Spouses and the Division of Household Labor by Gender, " American Sociological Review 59, no. 3 [ 1994 ]: 348-64). and on "gendered time" (see Ellen Mutari and Deborah M. Figart, " Europe at a Crossroads: Harmonization, Liberalization, and the Gender of Work Time, " Social Politics 8, no. 1 [ 2001 ]: 36-64 ).There is also a growing literature on factors that strengthen fathers' engagement with child caregiving (for a review, see William Marsiglio, Paul Amato, Randal D. Day, and Michael E. Lamb, " Scholarship on Fatherhood in the 1990s and Beyond, " Journal of Marriage and the Family 62, no. 4 [ 2000 ]: 1173-91). Nevertheless, American scholars, on the whole, have not granted the earner-caregiver model the centrality in social theory or in policy analysis that European feminists have.
11. See, for example: Nancy Folbre, " Children as Public Goods, " The American Economic Review 84, no. 2 (1994). 86-90 ; and Paula England and Nancy Folbre, " Who Should Pay for the Kids? " The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 563, May (1999). 194-207.
12. Several countries also have leave provisions that support and remunerate time spent caring for other family members-including, for example, disabled and elderly adults-but for our purposes, we are focusing on child-related provisions.
13. A large body of research focuses on the impact of leave on women's employment. The evidence clearly indicates that access to relatively short-term leaves has the potential to reduce labor-market inequalities between men and women by facilitating continuous maternal employment, reducing women's turnover, and minimizing wage penalties associated with motherhood. See Jennifer Glass and Lisa Riley, " Family Responsive Policies and Employee Retention Following Childbirth, " Social Forces 76, no. 4 (1998). 1401-35 ; Sandra L. Hofferth, " Effects of Public and Private Policies on Working After Childbirth, " Work and Occupations 23 (1996). 378-404 ; Jutta M. Joesch, " Paid Leave and the Timing of Women's Employment Before and After Birth, " Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (1997). 1008-21 ; and Kristen Smith, Barbara Downs, and Martin O'Connell, " Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns: 1961-1995, " Household Economic Studies (2001). 70-79. It is important to clarify, however, that while shorter-term leaves strengthen women's ties to the labor market, the effects of longer leaves-such as the two- or three-year leaves available in some European countries-are much less advantageous with respect to gender equality. Long-term leaves, paid or unpaid, are more problematic for two related reasons: they may erode human capital and, even more than shorter-term leaves, they are overwhelmingly taken up by women. OECD researchers reviewed the small literature on these two- to three-year leaves. They concluded that "schemes to pay parents to look after their own children at home... may encourage labor market detachment if they continue over a long period of time." (See Oecd, " Balancing Work and Family Life: Helping Parents into Paid Employment, " Employment Outlook [ Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001 ]: 146). It is not yet clear at what duration leaves switch from being advantageous to disadvantageous to women's labor-market attachment; some researchers place the turn-around point at somewhere between six months and one year. At the same time, while leave duration is a key variable, other aspects of family-leave policy design, such as the extent to which employers bear the brunt of the financing, may ultimately matter more. If employers are unduly burdened, reductions in demand for female labor may set in with relatively shorter leaves.
14. The question is often raised: "What about single parents?" meaning parents whose children have only one caregiver. Should single parents be entitled to one "share" (six months) or two "shares" (twelve months)? There is a case to be made for either result. One share would equalize, across family types, any employment penalties associated with leave-taking. Single mothers would likely claim the same amount of leave as all other parents. Two shares would equalize the total amount of parental care that young children are likely to receive (approximately one year), regardless of their family structure. We see merit in both arguments and propose a compromise: single parents would be entitled to nine months of fully paid leave.
15. To clarify, many countries' leave provisions are already entirely nontransferable. The United States' Family and Medical Leave Act, for example, grants twelve weeks of leave to new parents; parents cannot transfer any or all of their entitlement to their children's other parent.
16. A reasonable earnings cap might be set at approximately twice the level of average annual earnings. To further ensure progressivity, a portion of high-income recipients' benefits could be taxed.
17. Mutari and Figart, " Europe at a Crossroads, " 36.
18. The term "early childhood education and care" is often used to emphasize its dual role as substitute care for parents and education for children. For convenience, we shorthand this as child care in this article. In doing so, we do not mean to imply a different or less educationally enriching form of care.
19. Key facets of work-family policy offerings in these six countries, as of approximately 2000, are synthesized in three figures: Figures 2, 3, and 4. Institutional details underlying these synthetic results are presented in much more detail in Gornick and Meyers, Families That Work, 112-235.
20. Although we do not discuss them in this article because of space limitations, each of these countries also provides various kinds of "leave for family reasons." These leaves grant mothers and fathers time off throughout their children's lives to attend to short-term and unexpected needs. For details, see Gornick and Meyers, Families That Work, 112-46.
21. Figure 2 includes only the earnings-related components of family-leave programs (and assumes earnings below the cap). Some of these countries supplement the benefits captured in Figure 2 with additional periods of leave paid at a low flat rate-most substantially in Finland and France. We exclude these low-paid benefits here because, in some cases (such as Finland), the benefits are not conditioned on employment, so characterizing them as wage replacement is not fully accurate. In addition, the program in France is payable only for second and subsequent children. Furthermore, take-up is much lower than in the earnings-related programs, so including them distorts the level of provision upward. Figure 2 also excludes the United States' Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) programs because they are available in only five states.
22. Mothers in Finland may also collect a low flat-rate benefit (a "home-care" benefit) for about two years following the end of maternity and parental leave, i.e., until the child's third birthday. The benefit is allowed only if the child is not in public child care. Parents may also choose to use that payment to purchase care from a private child care provider.
23. EU Directives are binding for member countries, and Norway implements them voluntarily.
24. Ellingsaeter, " Dual Breadwinners Between State and Market, " 40-59.
25. In Figure 2, we credited Finland with having a "use-or-lose" component. Although it is not part of parental leave (where the term is generally used), the eighteen-day paternity benefit is, in effect, "use or lose," as fathers cannot transfer those days to their partners. And its duration approaches that of the "use-or-lose" quotas in Norway and Sweden.
26. Council Directive concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time (1993). http://www.legislationline.org/legislation.php?tid= 99&lid=5651&less=false.
27. Europa, " The Part-Time Work Directive, " (2004). http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/cha/c10416.htm.
28. Three European countries that are not among our six-Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom-have recently enacted laws providing some form of a right to work part-time or flexible hours. For an evaluation of their implementation and outcomes so far, see: Ariane Hegewisch, " Employers and European Flexible Working Rights: When the Floodgates Were Opened, " Work Life Law (UC Hastings College of The Law Issue Brief) Fall ( 2005 ).
29. Although Norway also provides extensive public ECEC, the costs of this care fall much more heavily on parents (because of high co-payments) and supply shortages have contributed to the growth of a "black market" in private, unregulated care arrangements.
30. Jerome DeHenau, " Gender Role Attitudes, Work Decisions, and Social Policies in Europe: A Series of Empirical Essays " (doctoral dissertation, Université Libre De Bruxelles, Faculté Des Sciences Sociales, Politiques Et Economiques / Solvay Business School, 2006 ).
31. See Ellingsaeter, " Dual Breadwinners Between State and Market, " 40-59. Also, see Arnlaug Leira, "Cash for Child Care and Daddy Leave, " in Parental Leave: Progress or Pitfall, ed. Peter Moss and Fred Deven (The Hague / Brussels: NIDI / CBGS Publications, 1999). 267-87.
32. Leira, " Cash for Child Care and Daddy Leave, " 267-87.
33. For details on the indicators reported in Table 1, except annual hours and fertility, see Gornick and Meyers, Families That Work, 58-83. Annual hours worked are taken from Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America: 2004-2005 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2005). Total fertility rates (TFR) are from United Nations, Human Development Reports: Basic Indicators for Other UN Member Countries-Total Fertility Rate, (2005). http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indicators.cfm?x= 291&y=1&z=1. The outcomes in this table pertain to the late 1990s and/ or approximately 2000. An exception is the TFRs, which pertain to the period 2000-2005.
34. Higher rates in Denmark and Finland result from a higher ratio of mothers' to fathers' employment rates-and of hours worked among the employed. See Gornick and Meyers, Families That Work, 58-71.
35. With respect to the U.S. Comparison, high U.S. fertility rates have been buoyed by the larger families of immigrants and children of immigrants.
36. This comparison is adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). Note that GDP per capita rankings shift annually. In 2005, Norway's PPP-adjusted GDP per-capita was slightly higher than that of the United States.
37. Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto, The State of Working America: 2004-2005, 428-29.
38. Lars Osberg, " Time, Money and Inequality in International Perspective, " Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper no. 334 (2002). 22.
39. Catherine Hakim, "Sociological Perspectives on Part-Time Work, " in Between Equalization and Marginalization: Women Working Part-Time in Europe and the U.S. of America, ed. Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Catherine Hakim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 22-70.
40. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, " Part-Time Work in Europe, " (2004). http://www.eurofound.eu.int/ working/reports/ES0403TR01/ES0403TR01.pdf.
41. Mutari and Figart, " Europe at a Crossroads, " 40.
42. Jeanne Fagnani and Marie-Therese Letablier, " Work and Family Life Balance: The Impact of the 35-Hour Laws in France, " Work, Employment, and Society 10, no. 3 (2004). 551-72.