Do politics matter? Women in Swedish local elected assemblies 1970–2010 and gender equality in outcomes

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wängnerud ◽  
Anders Sundell
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
National Level ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Input Side ◽  
Part Time ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Elected Representatives

A substantial number of studies support the notion that having a high number of women in elected office helps strengthen the position of women in society. However, some of the most cited studies rely on questionnaires asking elected representatives about their attitudes and priorities, thus focusing on the input side of the political system. The closer one gets to outcomes in citizens’ everyday lives, the fewer empirical findings there are to report. In this study, we attempt to explain contemporary variations in gender equality at the sub-national level in Sweden. We use six indicators to capture a broad spectrum of everyday life situations. The overall finding is that having a high number of women elected does affect conditions for women citizens, making them more equal to men in terms of factors such as income levels, full-time vs. part-time employment, and distribution of parental leave between mothers and fathers, even when controlling for party ideology and modernization at the municipal level. No effect was found, however, on factors such as unemployment, poor health, and poverty among women. Thus, the politics of presence theory (Phillips, 1995), which emphasizes the importance of having a high number of women elected, does exert an effect, but the effect needs to be specified. For some dimensions of gender equality, the driving forces of change have more to do with general transformations of society than the equal distribution of women and men in elected assemblies. We thoroughly discuss measurement challenges since there is no accepted or straightforward way of testing the politics of presence theory. We challenge the conventional wisdom of using indexes to capture the network of circumstances that determines the relationship between women and men in society; aggregating several factors undermines the possibility of building fine-tuned understandings of the operative mechanisms.

scholarly journals Gender Equality policy in Sweden: 1970s–2010s

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Nyberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Family Responsibilities ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Gender Equality Policy

The aim of this article is to give an overview of gender equality policy in Sweden from the 1970s until today. A number of political measures and whether these measures individually, as well as combined, have promoted gender equality and the dual-earner/dual-carer model are described and analyzed. The conclusion is that the right to part-time work, publicly financed child care, parental leave, and tax deductions for domestic services make it easier for mothers to reconcile work and family, but do not challenge the distribution of family responsibilities between women and men. However, the individual right for fathers to 2 months of parental leave does challenge the gender order, to a certain extent, and fathers today participate more in care and domestic work than earlier. The dual-earner/dual-carer family is closer at hand when women have a higher education and earnings and thereby greater bargaining power. Employed work is more conditional among women with a lower education level, i.e., they may be employed but under the constraint that they are still responsible for care and domestic work in the family. Another constraint in this group where many work part-time is the lack of available full-time positions in the labor market.

scholarly journals Families' Employment and Childcare Arrangements

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Podmore
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
Part Time ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

This study investigated parents' experiences and their views on labour force participation, child care arrangements, and parental leave policies. Participants were 60 families with five-year-old children, selected randomly from 14 schools in the greater Wellington region. This paper focuses on parents' employment experiences, with some reference to parental leave. Many mothers had participated in part-time paid work, and the percentage in full-time paid work increased to 19% by the year the children were four to five years of age. Each year from the child's birth up until school entry, over a third of the fathers were working 50 hours or more per week. A high incidence of participation in the early childhood education and care services was evident. There was a relatively low uptake of parental leave among mother and fathers who were in the paid workforce the year the children were born. Some of the main themes addressed in this paper are: diversity and change, the need for flexibility in workplaces, the impact of long hours of paid work on families, financial constraints, and gender roles.

Women and Entrepreneurship – Albanian Case

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Anna Xheka
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Women’S Entrepreneurship ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Women's Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Difference

Women’s entrepreneurship is a powerful source, regarding to the women’s economic independence and empowerment, as well as regarding employment generation, economic growth and innovation, development and the reduction of poverty as well as one of the terms of gender equality. This poster presents the situation of women's entrepreneurship in Europe in comparative terms, with special focus in Albania. The paper has a descriptive nature. Describes three different plans in comparative terms; the representation of men and women in entrepreneurship, the representation of women in entrepreneurship in different countries of Europe and of Europe as a whole, as well as compare to gender quota. Through the processing of secondary data from various reports and studies, this poster concludes that although that the gender equality goal is the equal participation of men and women in all sectors, including the entrepreneurship, in this sector, gender gap it is still deep. Another significant comparative aspect, it is the difference between full and part –time women entrepreneurship. While in full time entrepreneurship in a convince way, men are those that dominate, in part time entrepreneurship clearly it’s evident the opposite trend, women's representation is much higher. It’s very interesting the fact, that the women’s entrepreneurship in Albania, presented in a significant optimistic situation, ranking in the second place, after Greece in the European level

Excellence and gender

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farinaz Fassa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Feminist Movements

Purpose – Discussing the Swiss case, the purpose of this paper is to examine how gender equality policies deal with the present requirements for scholars to be considered “excellent”. It aims to pinpoint the lines of tension or coherence between excellence, meritocracy and gender politics. Design/methodology/approach – In order to specify the norms of academic careers and their different renditions, the author draws on two studies (at local and national levels) to illustrate where the changes and resistances are taking place. Findings – The translations of a number of demands of feminist movements into the policies set up to favour equality between the sexes may combine to challenge the norms of academia as a gendered realm. Nevertheless, without strong pressure from feminists at local level and the conduct of research pursuing the enterprise of deconstructing norms, top-down policies may prove less “corrective” than affirmative action. This pressure is not only useful to build gender equality in science but also to broaden the spectrum of knowledge that can become a common good. Research limitations/implications – As neither the names nor the positions of the experts who select the candidates at national level are made public, we had to opt for other, less satisfactory means. Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in the link made between the enhancements brought by Equalities policies and the changes they bring. It attempts to bring to light the extent to which gender equality policies conform to the neo-managerial order or challenge its norms to build a world that is more just.

Inclusion and Exclusion in Hiring

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
David S. Pedulla
Keyword(s):  
Full Time ◽  
Employment History ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Employment Skills ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Employment Experience ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Time Standard ◽  
Part Time Work

This chapter delves into the effects of each type of employment experience—part-time work, temporary agency employment, skills underutilization, and long-term unemployment. These are compared to full-time, standard employment on applicants' likelihood of receiving a callback for a job. As the chapter shows, the effects are largely contingent. First, they are contingent on the type of employment history. Each type of employment experience—part-time work versus temporary agency employment, for instance—does not result in the same treatment from hiring professionals. Second, the consequences of a particular employment experience are contingent on the race and gender of the worker. Indeed, it is difficult to isolate the effect of a given employment history from the way it is refracted through a worker's social group membership.

Fathering, parental leave, impacts, and gender equality: what/how are we measuring?

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 441-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Doucet ◽  
Lindsey McKay
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Unpaid Leave ◽  
Leave Taking ◽  
Canadian Provinces ◽  
And Gender

PurposeThis research article explores several questions about assessing the impacts of fathers' parental leave take up and gender equality. We ask: How does the conceptual and contextual specificity of care and equality shape what we focus on, and how, when we study parental leave policies and their impacts? What and how are we measuring?Design/methodology/approachThe article is based on a longitudinal qualitative research study on families with fathers who had taken parental leave in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Québec), which included interviews with 26 couples in the first stage (25 mother/father couples and one father/father couple) and with nine couples a decade later. Guided by Margaret Somers' historical sociology of concept formation, we explore the concepts of care and equality (and their histories, networks, and narratives) and how they are taken up in parental leave research. We also draw on insights from three feminist scholars who have made major contributions to theoretical intersections between care, work, equality, social protection policies, and care deficits: Nancy Fraser, Joan Williams, and Martha Fineman.FindingsThe relationship between fathers' leave-taking and gender equality impacts is a complex, non-linear entanglement shaped by the specificities of state and employment policies and by how these structure parental eligibility for leave benefits, financial dimensions of leave-taking (including wage replacement rates for benefits), childcare possibilities/limitations and related financial dimensions for families, masculine work norms in workplaces, and intersections of gender and social class. Overall, we found that maximizing both parental leave time and family income in order to sustain good care for their children (through paid and unpaid leave time, followed by limited and expensive childcare services) was articulated as a more immediate concern to parents than were issues of gender equality. Our research supports the need to draw closer connections between parental leave, childcare, and workplace policies to better understand how these all shape parental leave decisions and practices and possible gender equality outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe article is based on a small and fairly homogenous Canadian research sample and thus calls for more research to be done on diverse families, with attention to possible conceptual diversity arising from these sites.Practical implicationsThis research calls for greater attention to: the genealogies of, and relations between, the concepts of care, equality, and subjectivity that guide parental leave research and policy; to the historical specificity of models like the Universal Caregiver model; and to the need for new models and conceptual configurations that can guide research on care, equality, and parental leave policies in current global contexts of neoliberal capitalism.Originality/valueWe call for a move toward thinking about care, not only as care time, but as responsibilities, which can be partly assessed through the stories people tell about how they negotiate and navigate care, domestic work, and paid work responsibilities in specific contexts and conditions across time. We also advocate for gender equality concepts that attend to how families navigate restrictive parental leave and childcare policies and how broader socio-economic inequalities arise partly from state policies underpinned by a concept of liberal autonomous subjects rather than relational subjects who face moments of vulnerability and inter-dependence across the life course.

Egalitarian ideologies on the move: Changing care practices and gender norms in Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 627-639
Author(s):  
Lise Widding Isaksen ◽  
Mariya Bikova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Organization Of Care ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
And Gender

This article explores the complexities and ambiguities in Norwegian families’ interaction with the public childcare system. Public childcare is a cornerstone in the ‘double dividend’, that is, social policies that equalize children’s life chances and support gender equality. The dual earner/dual carer family model interacts with full-time participation in the labour market, gender equality at home and universal access to childcare, and has made contemporary childhood multi-local and mobile. As part of their everyday organization of care, parents have to establish connections between home, work and childcare. Here, we use the concept of ‘care loops’ to analyse how local families ‘do’ combinations of welfare services, family resources, gender ideologies and the labour of migrant care workers. Drawing on empirical research on migrant care workers in Norwegian families and discussing recent studies of majority families’ care practices, the article discusses the paradox that egalitarian norms and ideals might generate extra workloads that in turn create demands for migrant care workers and trigger geopolitical inequality.

Maternity Leave And Women's Mental Health

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Shibley Hyde ◽  
Marjorie H. Klein ◽  
Marilyn J. Essex ◽  
Roseanne Clark
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Maternity Leave ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Longitudinal Design ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Health Study ◽  
Work Status ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Part Time

The Wisconsin Maternity Leave and Health Study addresses an important policy issue, parental leave, by investigating the work status, maternity leave, and mental health of 570 women. In the longitudinal design, the women, all of whom were living with a husband or partner, were interviewed during the fifth month of pregnancy, 1 month postpartum, and 4 months postpartum. At 4 months postpartum, full-time workers, part-time workers, and homemakers did not differ in depression or anger, but full-time workers showed elevated anxiety compared with the other two groups. In multiple regression analyses, length of leave interacted significantly with marital concerns when predicting depression; women who took a short leave (6 weeks or less) and were high on marital concerns had the highest depression scores. Short maternity leave can be conceptualized as a risk factor that, when combined with other risk factors such as marital concerns, places women at greater risk for depression.

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