Women's Opportunities under Different Constellations of Family Policies in Western Countries: Inequality Tradeoffs Re-examined

Walter Korpi (), Tommy Ferrarini () and Stefan Englund ()
Additional contact information
Walter Korpi: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Postal: SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Tommy Ferrarini: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Postal: SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Stefan Englund: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Postal: SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

No 2/2011, Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: Women’s rising labor force participation since the 1960’s was long seen as heralding decreasing gender inequalities. According to influential social science writings this view has now to be revised; “women friendly” policies bringing women into the workforce are held to create major inequality tradeoffs between quantity and quality in women’s jobs. Unintendedly, such policies increase employer statistical discrimination and create glass ceilings impeding women’s access to influential positions and high wages. This paper re-examines theoretical and empirical bases in analysis of family policy effects on gender inequalities. Including capabilities as well as earnings in definitions of gender inequality, we improve possibilities for causal analyses by mapping institutional constellations of separate dimensions of family policies in Western countries. Reflecting conflicting political forces as well as religion, contrary to accepted assumptions of uni-dimensionality, family policies are multi-dimensional, with main distinctions favoring traditional families, mother’s employment, or market reliance. Using multilevel analyses and broad sets of outcome variables, we show that methodological mistakes largely invalidate earlier causal interpretations of major tradeoffs between quantity and quality in women’s labor force participation. Positive policy effects facilitate work-family reconciliation and combine women’s increased labor force participation with relatively high fertility. While major negative policy effects for women with tertiary education are difficult to find, family policies clearly differ in the extent to which they improve opportunities for women without university degrees.

Keywords: - (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2011-02-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no2.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no2.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no2.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2011_002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research SOFI, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daniel Rossetti ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).