What's Sex Got to Do with It? Women and Men in European Labour Markets

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What's Sex Got to Do with It?

Women and Men in European Labour Markets

Introduction

The subject of this thesis is gender stratification in working life, and the aim is to shed light on various aspects of European women’s employment. More specifically, women’s labour market outcomes and the im- plication of gender for labour market careers are studied. Although gender differences in the labour market in advanced economies have generally become weaker in recent decades, women are still disadvantaged in comparison with men regarding labour market rewards and positions of power. Women’s labour market disadvantages are commonly attributed in part to women taking a greater share of the responsibilities for family and children. Thus, in addition to gender differences, this thesis studies the effects of motherhood on labour market rewards and the implications of female part-time work for job skills and autonomy in work.

The thesis consists of four self-contained studies. The first study ex- amines the effect of the sex of the most immediate supervisor on women’s and men’s opportunities for on-the-job training in the Swedish labour market. The second study analyses differences in the skills and autonomy of female part-time workers in Britain and Sweden. The third study describes the associations between the motherhood wage penalty and different maternal employment policies by skill for ten European countries. The fourth study explores the connection between the gender

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gap in high authority positions and policies targeted at mothers’ employment using data for 25 countries in Europe.

Three out of the four studies in the thesis are cross-country comparative, and all focus on European countries. One rationale for applying a comparative perspective is that contrasting countries is helpful for understanding the effects of institutional contexts on labour market outcomes of individuals, because institutions often do not vary within countries.

The institutional framework could thus be seen as constituting structural constraints within which individuals make choices related to labour market careers and rewards, such as investments in education and career, family and children (cf., van der Lippe & van Dijk, 2002). Hence, cross- country comparative analyses may increase our knowledge about institutional sources of labour market inequalities. The empirical information is obtained from several data sources, with time points ranging from 1994 to 2006. The richness and scope of the data across countries and time allows an extensive account of European women’s and men’s labour market outcomes.

This introductory chapter is structured as follows. The first section provides a brief overview of theoretical explanations for gender differences in labour market careers and rewards and discusses how these differences might vary across countries. The second section presents short summaries on welfare regimes, gender regimes and approaches to cross- country comparative analysis. The third section presents the data sources used for the empirical analyses in the thesis and consider some methodological issues in cross-country comparative research. The process of harmonising social policies and labour market regulations with respect to

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part-time work, parental leave, and childcare in the European Union is discussed in section four. The fifth section discusses avenues for future research and the final section reviews the four papers constituting the thesis.

Gender Inequality in the Labour Market

Since the 1960s, gender gaps between men and women in industrialised countries have diminished in, for example, labour force participation, political representation and educational attainment (Blau & Kahn, 2006;

Goldin, 2006; Korpi, 2000). Nonetheless, concerns have been raised about the prospect of reaching full gender equality in the labour market (Blau, Brinton, & Grusky, 2006). One example of persistent gender differences is the segregation of men and women into different types of occupations, for example, women’s overrepresentation in nurturing, service-oriented, and non-supervisory occupations such as preschool teach- er, secretary and assistant nurse and men’s overrepresentation in technical and manual occupations (Chang, 2000; Charles, 1992, 2003; Charles &

Grusky, 2004; Kumlin, 2010; Nermo, 1999; Statistics Sweden, 2008). The allocation of men and women into different occupational sectors and industries, i.e., horizontal sex segregation, can be partially attributed to social and cultural views of what constitutes a “male” or a “female” job.

The fact that labour markets in industrialised countries are characterised by marked occupational gender segregation is not necessarily a problem as long as it is (a) based only on gender-specific preferences, and (b) not associated with differential access to rewards such as earnings or power.

The first line of justification is manifestly incorrect in light of evidence indicating the effects of discrimination. The second argument is also

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unconvincing, given that occupational sex segregation provides the basis for other types of remaining labour market gender inequalities, such as differences in pay and unequal promotion opportunities (Petersen &

Morgan, 2008). Thus, men and women are hierarchically stratified across the labour market, with men being overrepresented in higher positions, for example managers and top executives, and women overrepresented at lower levels within organisations; this is a form of segregation commonly referred to as vertical sex segregation.

Explanations for occupational sex segregation are found on both the individual and the institutional levels. On the individual level, there are supply-side and demand-side explanations. The former denote, for example, gendered preferences in educational and occupational choices, whereas the latter indicate, among other things, gender discriminatory practices in employers’ hiring and promotion decisions. Institutional mechanisms are assumed to shape occupational sex segregation through the welfare regime, for example, potential policies targeted at maternal employment and the organisation of care for children and the elderly, as well as the structure of the labour market. In addition, there are feminist accounts of a patriarchal ordering of society. Below, I briefly describe some of these different perspectives.

Individual-Level Explanations for Occupational Sex Segregation – Demand- and Supply-Side Sources

Supply-side mechanisms of occupational sex segregation emphasize gendered investments in human capital. Perhaps the most important explanation for occupational sex segregation in the labour market is differences between men and women in the choice of educational fields of study

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(Borghans & Groot, 1999; Bradely, 2000; Charles & Bradley, 2009; Erik- son & Jonsson, 1998). Most men tend to be found in the educational fields of technical science and mathematics, whereas women tend to be found in care, education, and the humanities (Bradley, 2000; Charles &

Bradley, 2009; Statistics Sweden, 2008). Thus, the allocation of men and women to different occupations in the labour market partly reflects their gendered educational choices. Why do women and men choose different educational fields of study? Gender differences in preferences are often attributed either to socialisation, beginning in early childhood (see Eng- land, 1992), or to rational decisions about human capital investments that people make to maximize the household utility in line with the neoclassical economic view (Becker, 1985).¹ Also, persons might avoid gender non-typical choices regarding educational fields of study due to expected sanctions if doing otherwise (Fenstermaker & West, 2002).

The process of socialisation implies that individuals are shaped by stereotypes of the characteristics that women and men are assumed to have.

The stereotype of a woman is, for example, that she is social, nurturing, and detail-oriented, whereas a man is ascribed qualities of strength and robustness as well as an ability to be mathematical and analytical. These gendered stereotypes are spread and reinforced, for example, through media, popular culture, and interactions with significant others, such as parents and peers, as well as through cognitive processes in which people notice evidence that is consistent with their pre-existing stereotypes and disregard evidence that is not (England, 1992; Charles & Grusky, 2004).

Such gendered stereotypes would then lead women and men to choose

1 Some scholars argue in favour of other types of explanations; see, for example, Hakim (2000), who refers to biological differences, among other things, to account for gender-

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fields of study in accordance with what is seen as typically “male” or

“female”.

The neoclassical economic perspective in contrast emphasises that gender differences in the labour market arise because people make rational choices about human capital investments, with the household, not the individual, as the unit of interest (Becker, 1985, 1991; Mincer & Pola- chek, 1974). The household utility would be best maximised through the specialisation of labour market work versus domestic work. Given that women traditionally take the major responsibility for children, they are assumed to invest less in human capital and to specialise in domestic work. This also implies that women prefer occupations that facilitate work-family balance through, for example, flexibility in terms of working hours and lower penalties for career interruptions. This would then be the main explanation for the tendency of men and women to be found in different occupations (Becker, 1991; Mincer & Polack, 1974; Polachek, 1981).² However, the empirical evidence that female typical occupations display such characteristics is not clear (England, 1982, 1992; Glass, 1990). In addition, the neoclassical economic perspective has been criti- cised for its failure to acknowledge that existing gender differences in the labour market that disadvantage women per se could generate gender differences in human capital (England, 1992). If women take gender differences into account when making decisions about human capital investments, it might imply that they invest less than men based on the assumption that their labour market rewards are lower. Nevertheless,

2 In addition, it is argued that even if men and women have the same amount of human capital and work the same amount of hours, women would allocate less effort to labour market work because women, compared with men, assign a greater share of their effort to domestic work (Becker, 1985).

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women’s and men’s educational attainment is compatible or even higher for women in industrialised countries in recent years (Buchmann & Di- Prete, 2006). However, differentials in training in the workplace, so called on-the-job training (OJT), across occupations as well as between men and women in the same occupation may account for some of the gender differences in labour market outcomes (Tam, 1997; Tomaskovic- Devey & Skaggs, 2002).

Demand-side mechanisms of occupational sex segregation refer, among other things, to employers’ hiring and promotion decisions as well as to wage setting. Two types of discrimination are commonly highlighted:

taste discrimination and statistical discrimination (cf., Becker, 1971;

Phelps, 1972). Taste discrimination implies a preference for something specific, for example, men compared with women or whites compared with non-whites. It does not have to be the employer who has the preference. Such discrimination could also refer to preferences of customers or employees. In line with economic theory, the use of taste discriminatory practices would disappear in the long run because firms hiring the discriminated category of workers would be more economically efficient.

The logic is that if, for example, women are shut out from certain firms, they will be hired by others firms at lower wages. Statistical discrimination, in turn, applies to the general information that the employer has about a certain group of individuals. It could, for example, refer to the fact that women tend to display labour market intermittency at some point in their labour market career through maternity leave. This type of information about categories of individuals (in our example, women of a certain age) tends to be used by employers to a larger extent when they

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have limited information about the productivity of an employee, for example, when making hiring decisions.

A comprehensive model including both demand- and supply-side causes for occupational sex segregation is suggested by Charles and Grusky (2004). Two main mechanisms are suggested to generate labour market differences between men and women: gender essentialism and male primacy. Gender essentialism pertains to gender differences in the types of domains in which women and men are viewed as competent, and male primacy refers to the view that men are seen as more status-worthy than women and are thus assumed to be more suitable for positions of high pay and status. Accordingly, this model explains segregation in terms of (a) the tendency for men to obtain the best and most desirable occupations and women to obtain the lesser ones (i.e., vertical segregation) (see also the concept of “queuing”, Reskin & Roos, 1990) and (b) the tendency for women and men to sort into occupations that are consistent with presumptions about their respective competencies (i.e., horizontal segregation or gender essentialism).

In addition, mechanisms that maintain labour market gender segregation could work through homophily or homosocial reproduction (Kanter, 1977; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). These concepts refer to the tendency of individuals to favour other individuals with characteristics similar to their own. Hence, if men are in the majority in managerial positions in a firm, men would be pre- ferred to women when promotion decisions are made. These notions are also associated with gender differences in terms of social networks and resources within the firm that are available to the individual (Smith-

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Lovin & Miller McPherson, 1993). Indeed, firms with a gender-balanced management have been associated with smaller gender gaps regarding wages and promotions compared with firms where women in high positions are scarcer (cf., Cohen & Huffman, 2007; Cohen, Broschak, &

Haveman, 1998; Hultin & Szulkin, 1999, 2003). There are also theories relating female disadvantage in the labour market to social closure mechanisms (Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993). Under these arguments, men would attempt to limit women’s access to positions of status and prestige in order to maintain their privileges (given that men are in the majority in these types of positions within firms).

Why Does Occupational Sex Segregation Vary across Countries?

Occupational sex segregation varies across countries and time (Blau &

Kahn, 2003; Charles, 2003; Charles & Grusky, 2004; Nermo, 1999;

Rosenfeld & Kalleberg, 1991) with respect to levels of horizontal segregation (Blackburn, Jarman, & Brooks, 2000; Chang, 2000; Charles &

Grusky, 2004, Nermo, 1999) and levels of vertical segregation (Aben- droth, Maas, & van der Lippe, forthcoming; Mandel & Semyonov, 2006;

Meyersson Milgrom & Petersen, 2006; Rosenfeld, Van Buren, & Kalle- berg, 1998; Wright, Baxter, & Birkelund, 1995; Yaish & Stier, 2009). The Nordic countries commonly rank highest in the world in terms of overall gender equality (e.g., World Economic Forum, 2010). Even so, previous research shows Sweden not to have relatively low levels of occupational sex segregation (e.g., Anker, 1998; Charles & Grusky, 2004; Mandel &

Semyonov, 2006; Melkas & Anker, 2001; Wright et al., 1995), whereas labour markets in countries which are generally depicted as gender- conservative and lacking pronounced policies targeted at work-family balance and gender equality, are less segregated by sex. Why would this

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be the case? Cross-national variation in gender differences in the labour market are commonly attributed to institutional forces related to the context within which human capital investments and labour market career decisions are made, including, for example, employment law, and to state policies regarding maternity leave and the provision of childcare.

Charles and Grusky (2004) related parts of the high to moderate levels of horizontal occupational sex segregation in Scandinavian countries to post-industrial economic restructuring that resulted in high female labour force participation rates and relatively large service sectors, which, in turn, resulted in an expansion of typically female occupations (e.g., nurs- ing and caring).³ The size of the service sector may also be related to the vertical sex segregation in the labour market. For example, it has been argued that women’s career advancement would be facilitated in public sector jobs because of, for instance, bureaucratic regulations limiting discriminatory practices (Gornick & Jacobs, 1998; Hultin 1998).⁴ Addi- tionally, overrepresentation of women in the public sector might lead to fewer male benefits due to homosociality, for example, as regard employers’ promotion decisions (Kanter 1977). However, the empirical evidence for these arguments is mixed (Bihagen & Ohls, 2006; Gornick

& Jacobs, 1998; Hultin, 2003; Mandel & Semyonov, 2006; Yaish & Stier, 2009). Some previous research has in fact related large public sectors to greater gender gaps in authority to women’s disadvantage (Mandel &

Semyonov, 2006; Yaish & Stier, 2009).

3 The service industries in Scandinavian countries are dominated by occupations in care and health in the public sector, whereas they consist of jobs of a wider range in Anglo- Saxon countries such as the U.S., for example, in the hotel and restaurant industry (Nermo, 1999). As a result, Scandinavian labour markets will have higher levels of occupational sex segregation compared with other countries with large service sectors.

4 However, it could also be argued that lack of competition would imply increased opportunities for discrimination due to taste (Becker, 1971).

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One strand of cross-national comparative research argues that policies targeted at work-family balance have partially negative effects on gender equality in the labour market and this would be one reason for the “puz- zling” finding that the Nordic countries do not rank low on occupational sex segregation compared to other industrialised countries. For example, Mandel and Semyonov (2005, 2006) claim that interventions facilitating mothers’ labour market activity, such as publicly provided childcare, maternity leave, and the possibility to part-time work increase female labour force participation but at the same time result in a larger gender wage gap (cf., Ruhm, 1998) and imply disadvantages for women in terms of their chances to reach higher labour market positions. The reason would be that extensive work-family policies would decrease female labour market selection (i.e., a woman would not to the same extent have to choose whether to pursue a labour market career at the expense of a family or focus on family at the expense of her career), and thus, employers would anticipate that most women would display relatively long labour market intermittency when having children. The costs of maternity leave for the employer (e.g., in terms of potential employee human capital depreciation or lost human capital accumulation) would then spill over to all women (in fertile ages), leading to reduced wages and career opportunities. Extensive maternity leave and employment security for mothers on leave would then, according to this argument, imply a trade- off between female labour force participation and gender equality in the labour market.

A different part of the literature draws a distinction between liberal and coordinated market economies (LMEs and CMEs), the former consist- ing of the Anglo-Saxon countries and the latter inter alia of Scandinavia

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and continental Europe. These country clusters differ in many ways with regard to labour market institutions, with a crucial defining feature being different skill formation systems: general skills dominate in LMEs and specific skills in CMEs. The importance of firm-specific skills in CMEs works to the disadvantage of women due to statistical discrimination (Estévez-Abe, 2005, 2006; Soskice, 2005). Female workers are more vul- nerable in labour markets where specific skills are important, because the incentives to invest in specific skills, for both employers and workers, are more dependent on stable labour supply and long job tenure than in the case of general skills. This may especially be the case in high-level positions, since the costs of losing firm-specific skills are relatively large in such jobs. Previous cross-country analyses of the association between skill formation and the rate of inequality by class and gender give mixed support to the VoC theoretical framework (cf., Charles, 2005; Estevez- Abe, 2005; Tåhlin, 2007).

Welfare Regimes, Gender Regimes, and Approaches to Cross-Country Comparative Analysis

Countries can be categorized into clusters of welfare regimes based on the nature of national institutions and policies (Esping-Andersen, 1990;

Korpi, 2000). Of interest is the relationship among the state, the market, and the family and when (as well as how and to what extent) the state provides support for its citizens. The concept of “decommodification”

(i.e., to what extent distribution is separated from the market) is central to Esping-Andersen’s overall question on how the state affects class rela- tionships. Esping-Andersen’s (1990) three ideal types of welfare regimes,

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i.e., “the liberal”, “the conservative/corporativist”, and “the social de- mocratic,” have been widely deployed in the social sciences as a tool for understanding cross-national differences in various outcomes.⁵

However, Esping-Andersen has been subjected to criticism from feminist scholars, who point to the lack of a gender perspective (see Lewis, 1992, 1997; Orloff, 1993; Sainsbury, 1994, 1999). Countries that take into consideration the possibilities of women (in particular, mothers) having paid work and a career through state support, such as publicly provided or subsidised care for children and the elderly, are commonly labelled gender regimes. There exist several such gender regime frameworks (e.g., Daly, 2000; Orloff, 1993; see also Haas, 2005). Sainsbury (1999) presents three gender policy regimes: “the male bread-winner” regime (in which men receive their entitlements through their connection to the labour market whereas married women receive them mainly through their status as wives), “the separate gender role” regime (in which a traditional division of labour between men and women is maintained but the care dimension is recognised in parallel to paid work implying that men receive social rights due to their status as breadwinners whereas women confer social rights due to their status as caregivers), and “the individual earner-

5 The main facets of Esping-Andersen’s three welfare regime types are the following.

The liberal regime implies low public spending and few state interventions, with limited and mean-tested benefits. The female labour force participation is, nonetheless, not particularly low, which can be explained by, for example, economic need as a result of low wages and weak employment protection. The U.K. is an example of a country that is categorized into this cluster. In the conservative/corporativist regime type (for example, Germany), most of the social benefits are related to male breadwinner employment (which has a relatively high level of employment protection), and public provision of care for the elderly and children is fairly restricted. Hence, the proportion of women (especially mothers with young children) in paid work is rather low. The social democ- ratic regime type, which can be exemplified by Sweden, has high state intervention, with social benefits being connected to citizenship. Parental leave is extensive, and support for working mothers (fathers) is provided, which encourages dual careers and high

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carer” regime (in which gender equality in terms of paid and unpaid work is promoted). Moreover, Lewis (1992, 1997) developed a gender typology of welfare regimes in response to Esping-Andersen. Focusing on the social security system, the level of social service provision and married women’s attachment to the labour market, Lewis differentiates between the “strong”, “moderate”, and “weak” male bread-winner regimes. Lewis states that, when developing a gender welfare regime, the important questions are how unpaid work is valued and how it can be shared more equally between men and women. However, the Esping- Andersen (1990) welfare regime typology is one of the most frequently used, and it has been proven to be useful also for analysing gender inequality (van der Lippe & van Dijk, 2002).⁶

Cross-country comparative studies are often related to two main approaches: the “case study” approach and the “micro-macro” approach (van der Lippe & van Dijk, 2002; Stier, 2009). The case study approach implies an in-depth study of one country relative to a baseline (e.g., the European average), a few countries being compared using national data sources that are harmonised, or several countries that are being indirectly compared to each other (e.g., “country-specific” chapters in an edited volume). The micro-macro approach refers to direct comparisons of harmonised cross-national data using a large number of countries combined with macro indicators (potentially using country clusters). Natu- rally, there are advantages and drawbacks to all of these approaches to cross-country comparative research, and the procedure must depend on the research question (as well as on limitations imposed by the data). The

6 It should be mentioned that Esping-Andersen has taken account of the feminists’

critique, and in his later work, he incorporated a dimension considering care work (Esp- ing-Andersen, 1999).

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reason for deploying regime types is, arguably, that it is naive to focus on only certain indicators when trying to explain variation across countries because features of cross-country dissimilarity can be assumed to be related to many factors (and not solely to one or a few). Nonetheless, welfare regimes clusters are not directly used in any of the papers in this thesis (though this framework is partially drawn upon in study II). The argument is that although country clustering certainly is advantageous for finding large general patterns information about differences between countries within each of the regime clusters is lost. In addition, some countries do not easily fit into the typology, and making the schema detailed enough to consider such cases might easily give almost as many clusters as there are countries in the study. Hence, in this thesis, the first study uses only Swedish data, and it is placed in the European context mainly through a brief account of the specific characteristics of the Swedish labour market, whereas the second study deploys both direct and indirect comparisons of Sweden and Britain using cross-national and national data sources. The third and fourth papers make use of cross- national harmonised data combined with macro indicators on institutional characteristics.

Data Sources and Methodological Considerations in Cross-National Comparative Research

Cross-national comparative research in sociology has grown in importance over the last decades (van der Lippe & van Dijk, 2002), perhaps partially reflecting the development of the EU which has resulted in increased demand, access, and interest in cross-country comparable data.

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Because harmonised cross-national data facilitate research aiming to dis- entangle potential effects of public policies and national legislation on individual outcomes the access to cross-country comparative information is obviously of interest for both the research community and policy makers.

The micro datasets used in the empirical parts of the thesis (see Table 1) are, to a large extent, cross-nationally harmonised surveys with repre- sentative samples from countries in Europe (or the EU), namely, the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the European Social Survey (ESS), the European Union Labour Force Surveys (EU-LFS), and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU- SILC).

The first two sources consist of data gathered through surveys performed simultaneously, whereas the EU-LFS consists of data collected without detailed cross-national coordination (it should be noted that this is also the case for some years and countries included in the ECHP). The process of gathering EU-SILC data varied across countries, and included new surveys, existing national surveys, and information from registers. In addition, national data sources for Sweden and the U.K., namely the Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU), the National Swedish Survey on Living Conditions (ULF), and the British Skills Survey (BSS) are used.

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Table 1. Summary of data sources used in the thesis.

Data sources Coverage Year(s)* Used in More

information

Cross-national harmonised surveys European Community Household Panel (ECHP)

EU 1994-2001 Study III A

European Social Survey (ESS) EU/Europe 2004 Study II B

European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS)

EU 2002 Study II C

European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC)

EU/Europe 2005, 2006 Study IV D

National surveys

British Skills Survey (BSS) Britain 2001 Study II E

Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU) Sweden 2000 Study I, Study II F National Swedish Survey on Living

Conditions (ULF)

Sweden 2002 Study II G

In August 2011, information on the data sources listed above could be found on:

A http://circa.europa.eu/irc/dsis/echpanel/info/data/information.html B http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

C http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/microdata/lfs D http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/microdata/eu_silc

E http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/alanfelstead/Guide%20to%202006%20Skills%20S urvey.pdf

F http://www.sofi.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=9324&a=35617 G http://www.scb.se/Pages/Product____12199.aspx

* Used in this thesis.

Internationally Harmonised Measures of Stratification: Education, Occupation, and Class/Socio-economic Position

With expanding attention to cross-country comparative research in the area of social stratification (van der Lippe & van Dijk, 2002), increased consideration has been given to the comparability of key dimensions of stratification such as education, occupation, and class or socio-economic

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position since measures that are conceptually an operationally equivalent across countries are required to perform cross-national comparative analyses. Below, I briefly account for three international standard classifications.

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was intro- duced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Or- ganization (UNESCO) in 1976 to ease reporting and comparability of statistics (Schneider, 2008).⁷ Updated in 1997 to the current version, ISCED-97, the main dimensions of the classification group educational programmes according to levels and fields of education (UNESCO, 2006). Seven main levels of education are recognised (from “0 Pre- preliminary educations” to “6 Second stage of tertiary education”). The four mid-educational levels (“2 Lower secondary education” to “5 First stage of tertiary education”) are further divided into sub-categories de- noted by capital letters A, B, and C, depending on aspects such as the type, orientation and destination of the programme.

For occupation, the internationally harmonised classification used in cross-comparative research is the International Standard Classification of Oc- cupations (ISCO). This system was originally developed by the Interna- tional Labour Organization (ILO) in 1957 (i.e., ISCO-58) to facilitate international reporting and comparison of statistics (ILO, 2010). ISCO- 58 was revised in 1968 and 1988 and again in 2008 to the latest revised version, ISCO-08. The main principle of classification deployed by the ISCO is the categorisation of jobs, defined as “a set of tasks and duties per-

7 CASMIN Educational Classification is another categorisation of education sometimes used by social scientists (cf., König, Lüttinger, & Müller, 1988). For a discussion on educational classifications used in comparative research, see Braun and Müller (1997).

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formed, or meant to be performed, by one person, including for an employer or in self employment” (ILO, 2010). In the ILO definition, occupations are thus constituted by a set of jobs that display similar characteristics or that involve doing the same type of work. The ISCO system is based on the two main aspects of “skill level” and “skill specialisation” of the occupation, and the classifications consists of four levels: (1) major groups, (2) sub-major groups, (3) minor groups, and (4) unit groups.

Finally, there are classification systems addressing class or socio- economic position. The International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI), the Erik- son–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) schema, and the European Socio-economic Classification (ESeC) are examples of such internationally harmonised measures.⁸ The SEI classification combines information on education, occupation and income; an early example is Duncan’s Socioeconomic Index (1961). The current internationally harmonised version, ISEI, was developed by Ganzeboom and Treiman (Ganzeboom, De Graaf, &

Treiman, 1992). The EGP classification, which was the outcome of joint work by Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero uses information on em- ployment relations to divide employers, the self-employed and several categories of employees into separate classes (cf., Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe, 2007). The ESeC is a recent class categorisation developed by a group of European social scientists and designed to make available an improved version of the EGP class schema, providing both more thorough validation and better documentation for comparative purposes (Rose & Harrison, 2010).

8 Other internationally harmonised measures used in stratification research are the Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale (SIOPS) (Ganzeboom & Treiman, 2003), the Cambridge Social Interaction Scale (CAMSIS) (developed by Blackburn, Prandy, and Stewart and emphasizing the social interaction among occupational groups; see Berg- man & Joye, 2001), and the Wright schema (focusing on the aspects of property, authori-

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The Harmonisation of Social Policies with Respect to Part-Time Work, Maternity/Parental Leave and Child- care in the EU Member States

Three out of the four studies in this thesis are cross-country comparative and all studies focus on European countries. The cross-national comparative studies all connect to cross-country variation in social policies targeted (mainly) to employment of mothers, namely part-time work, maternity/parental leave, and childcare. The extent to which policies within these areas have been subjected to harmonisation among the EU member states will be briefly discussed below.

There has been a clear harmonisation among countries in the EU regarding the legal framework targeted at the free movement of goods, capital and labour. However, large variations still exist in terms of welfare states.

Policies supporting a balance of work and family have been promoted by the EU mainly because these policies are seen as a way to attend to declining fertility rates and the need for increased female labour force participation to maintain economic growth and international competitive- ness in the light of an ageing population. The 2000 Lisbon European Council “Social Policy Agenda” aimed, among other things, to increase female labour force participation to 60 percent by 2010 (Haas, 2008).

Areas of interest for policies targeted to increasing female labour force participation are, for example, maternity/parental leave systems and how care for the elderly and children is arranged, as well as opportunities for reduced work hours or flexible work schedules (Den Dulk, 2005; Jau- motte, 2004). Nevertheless, direct regulations (i.e., primary, “binding”, legislation) targeted at mothers’ employment and gender equality have

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been relatively limited within the EU, and gender policies have mainly been launched as action programmes and recommendations (Sümer, 2009).

Primary legislation though guarantee of equal pay for equal work independent of sex.⁹ A more extensive account on the equality between men and women with regard to labour market opportunities and treatment at work was proposed in 1992,¹⁰ and signed by all EU member states but the U.K. In 1997, the Parental Leave Directive (primary legislation) was introduced which granted three months of unpaid parental leave to working men and women (with at least one year tenure) available until the child turned eight years old (Haas, 2008). EU directives have also been implemented that are relevant to the employment protection legislation with implications for mothers.¹¹ Furthermore, in 1997 the Euro- pean Commission introduced a directive targeted to part-time employment.¹² It aimed at improving the quality of part-time work and reducing inequality between full-time and part-time workers, for example with respect to pay, working conditions, benefits, and holidays (Rubery, Smith, Fagan, & Grimshaw, 1998). Several European countries have introduced measures to facilitate transitions from full-time to part-time work. However, these are often restricted to a limited period in time and applicable only for certain groups of workers, for example employees with young children. For example, Swedish parents with children below the age of eight have the right to reduce their working hours (up to one

9 This can be derived from Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome from 1957.

10 Article 2, the Treaty of Maastricht.

11 E.g., the Directive on Safety and Health at Work of Pregnant Workers, Workers who recently Given Birth or are Breastfeeding was implemented in 1992.

12 Council directive 97/81/EC (1997) concerning the Framework Agreement on part-

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fourth of the time). In Great Britain (i.e., England, Scotland, and Wales), employees with children not older than 16 years, have the right to apply for part-time work (if the employee has tenure of 26 weeks or more).

British employers will have to consider such requests for changed working hours, but they have the right to decline.

Also, the EU has pushed the development of childcare facilities, started in 1992 with “Recommendation on Childcare” proposing initiatives

“…in four areas: Childcare services, leave for employed parents, to make the workplace responsive to the needs of workers with children and measures to promote increased participation by men in the care and upbringing of children” (Sümer 2009, p. 70). In 2002 it was followed by the Barcelona 2012 target that all of the EU member states should provide childcare to at least 33 percent of all children below three years of age and 90 percent or more of all children between three years of age and the mandatory school age, but these targets were not binding for the member states. A recent evaluation con- cluded that “If the focus is strictly on childcare services, the available data indicate that services in most countries are still far from sufficient to reach the Barcelona tar- gets.” (Plantenga, Remery, Siegel, & Sementini, 2008, p. 42).

Countries with little support for dual-earner families often encourage employers to provide family-friendly policies (Crompton, Lewis, & Lyo- nette, 2007). However, concerns have been raised about the efficiency of such measures in general because (a) the extent to which it is possible to make use of such work-family policies is arbitrarily dependent on the employer and thus varies by firm (potentially even within firms), and because (b) family-friendly measures are used primarily by women, and hence, do not work against underlying gender essentialist assumptions of

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family and children being the main responsibility of women (Lewis, 1997). Furthermore, an overall concern with benefits provided by the employer is that they may also constrain labour market mobility.

Avenues for Future Research

In this part, three areas of interest for future research are highlighted.

The first and the second sections focus on topics that were of relevance for the studies in the thesis, but that were not further explored: (a) the distinction between jobs that were initially designed as part-time work compared with full-time jobs where employees reduced work hours due to the presence of small children in the household, and (b) fathers’ uptake of parental leave. In the third section the importance of differentiation by skill when analysing differences between women and men in labour market outcomes both nationally and cross-nationally is empha- sised.

First, there are central distinctions as regard part-time work that would benefit from further clarification. In this thesis part-time work is primarily discussed in terms of being a maternal employment policy, i.e., as a strategy to enhance (mainly) mothers’ labour force participation. It is though important to notice the distinction between jobs initially designed as part-time work and jobs that were initially on full-time basis but where the employee reduced work hours to facilitate the balance between work and family when having young children. It can be assumed that some of the drawbacks that part-time workers are facing would mainly be evident for positions that were initially designed as part-time, and are less appar-

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ent for those employees who were hired to do full-time work but reduced their working hours. It is possible that, for example, job quality aspects such as skill requirements of the job and autonomy in work would not be affected to any large extent by a reduction of working hours for employees initially working full-time. In contrast, if employers see part-time work as signalling low work commitment and a focus on the family, the two categories of part-time workers would then both face disadvantages in terms of labour market outcomes such as opportunities to continuous training in the job, wage increase, and chances to promotion. Unfortunately, data provides little information on the initial design of the job. However, this topic would be of significance to further ex- plore in future research.

Secondly, in all of the studies in this thesis, women’s greater family responsibilities are seen as a major reason for women’s disadvantages in labour market outcomes as compared with men. Haas (2008) argues that

“Parental leave must be widely used by men to reduce the stigma parenthood now has on women’s employment opportunities” (p. 109). Hence, a more equal division of the caretaking responsibilities between men and women is seen as the key to gender equality in the labour market. Several countries have en- couraged fathers’ uptake of parental leave, and some countries have introduced “fathers’ leave only”, i.e., parental leave that can be used only by the parent who does not use the majority of the parental leave (commonly fathers). When discussing parental leave in the studies in this thesis, fathers’ uptake of such leave is not acknowledged. However, it could indeed be assumed that countries in which fathers are involved more in childcare would also display smaller gender gaps in labour market inequality. Nevertheless, in Sweden, which has one of Europe’s oldest and

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most generous parental leave systems targeted at promoting gender equality in the labour market (Haas, 2008), around 85 percent of all fathers take some leave, but often only during a limited period in time (Duvander & Andersson, 2006). Only 18 percent of the parental leave days were used by fathers in 2003 (Bygren & Duvander, 2006). Hence, the impact of fathers’ leave on labour market gender inequality may be limited since women still tend to use the majority of all parental leave (but see Johansson, 2010). Nevertheless, this issue is an important and promising area that should be tended to in upcoming research.

Finally, a uniting feature of the studies in this thesis is the accentuation on skills for mediating differences in women’s and men’s labour market outcomes within and across countries. In study I, the skill requirements of the job is shown to be an important predictor of initial on-the-job training. In addition, differentials in the skill levels of female and male supervisors’ jobs to women’s disadvantage are assumed to mediate part of the difference in initial on-the-job training between private sector employed women working for a man or a woman respectively. Study II highlights greater skill requirements and job autonomy of Swedish women working part-time compared with British part-time working women.

The associations between the motherhood wage penalty and maternal employment policies by skill are in focus in study III. In study IV it is shown that the relation between the gender gap in authority and policies targeted to maternal employment differ by skill level of the authority position (in study IV operationalised by occupational category). Taken together these four studies show that skill requirements of the job is a factor that deserves attention in future research on men’s and women’s

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labour market outcomes both at the workplace level and when it is ex-

amined cross-nationally and linked to institutional characteristics.

Summary of the Four Studies

The thesis includes four studies, with the first one, Taking Training to Task: Sex of the Immediate Supervisor and Men’s and Women’s Time in Initial On-the-Job Training, examining the Swedish context only. In this study, initial training in the workplace, so-called on-the-job training (OJT), is in focus. OJT has attracted much attention in both research and in the policy debate since the 1990s and onwards. Drawing on theories of homophily, homosocial reproduction, and human capital theory, the effect of the sex of the most immediate supervisor on the length of time men and women spend in initial OJT is examined. Analyses were conducted using cross-sectional data from the 2000 Swedish Level of Living Survey and matched employer registry data. The results show that men receive long- er initial OJT compared with women, but men’s time in initial OJT is independent of the sex of the supervisor. For women in the private sector, the chances of receiving long initial OJT are larger if the immediate supervisor is a man. There is therefore little evidence supporting gender discriminatory practices in line with homophily and homosocial reproduction. The findings are discussed in terms of gender differences with regard to the firm resources available to male and female supervisors and dissimilarities in the skill levels and complexity of the jobs men and women supervise.

Part-time work is central in current labour market debates. For some, it is seen as a way of coming to terms with the incompatibility of work and

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family life, and increase general labour supply. Others argue that part- time work creates a dual workforce, with part-time employees holding low-quality jobs and being less integrated into the labour force than indi- viduals working full-time. The aim of the second paper, The Skills and Autonomy of Female Part-Time Work in Britain and Sweden,¹³ is to study the effects of different institutional systems on the quality of female work.

We examine these questions by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time employees in two countries, Britain and Sweden, often considered as representing quite distinct forms of institutional regime.

The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equiva- lents in Britain. Even so, both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantages when compared to female full-time workers.

We conclude that differences in the institutional systems of Sweden and Britain do have a significant effect on the absolute skill level of part-time work. However, the relative disadvantage of part-timers persists despite Swedish policies giving greater salience to improvements in the quality of work.

In light of the discussion on the difficulties experienced by parents who combine work and family demands, many scholars have examined the wage penalties associated with parenthood for women. Previous research shows that considerable variation exists regarding the strength of the motherhood wage penalty across countries. These disparities have been partially attributed to differences in national policies supporting maternal employment. Although the elements of such policies are usually under-

13 Co-authored with Duncan Gallie (Nuffield College, Oxford University) and Ying Zhou (School of Management and Law, University of Surrey).

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stood to be complementary, their effects on employees, especially on those in jobs with diverse skill levels, may differ. In the third paper, Where Do Working Mothers Fare the Worst? A Comparative Study on Wage Penalties for Motherhood by Skill,¹⁴ longitudinal data from the 1994–2001 European Community Household Panel (ECHP) are used to describe the associations between different maternal employment policies and the wage penalties for mothers by skill. With the important caveat that we only have information for 10 countries, findings from fixed-effects mod- els indicate that, after adjusting for female participation in the labor force, a high proportion of small children in publicly funded childcare facilities is associated with a modest decrease in the motherhood wage penalty, regardless of skill level. By contrast, paid maternity leave is weakly associated with an increase in the motherhood wage gap only for women in less skilled jobs. Our findings highlight the importance of ac- counting for skill as well as the significance of separating maternity leave and the provision of public childcare when studying cross-country variation in women’ labor market outcomes.

Authority positions commonly bring with them significant types of power, for example, influence over setting wages and granting promotions. Hence, equal access for men and women to such positions is of considerable importance. Although the Nordic countries are typically depicted as the most gender equal in the world, several studies suggest that they rank low relative to other industrial countries with respect to gender equality in positions of workplace authority and women’s chances of obtaining the highest white-collar jobs. In the fourth paper, Attaining

14 Co-authored with Asaf Levanon (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Uni- versity of Haifa) and Tamar Kricheli-Katz (Department of Sociology, Stanford Univer- sity).

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Authority: Cross-National Variation in the Gender Gap in High Authority Posi- tions, the extent to which women’s opportunities to attain positions of high labour market authority is associated with maternal employment policies, such as paid parental leave and part-time work, are studied. The analyses were conducted using cross-sectional data from the 2005 and 2006 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU- SILC) for 25 countries. The results showed that a high proportion of women working long part-time hours was related to larger gender differences in the attainment of high authority positions, which disadvantaged women. However, there was no association between paid parental leave and the gender gap in positions of workplace authority.

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