Marie Evertsson

Gender Ideology and the Sharing of Housework and Child Care in Sweden

We use the Swedish Young Adult Panel Study to study spouses’ gender ideology and women’s and men’s division of routine housework and child care. The results show that men with an egalitarian gender ideology spend 1 hour more in housework per week than do other men and that their spouses spend approximately 2 hours less in housework than do other women. Women’s gender ideology, in contrast, only seems to influence women’s own time spent in housework (and not their spouses’). Couples wherein the woman and/or the man have a strong egalitarian ideology display a more gender-equal division of child care. Equality in child care and housework are linked and men spend more time in housework when they live in a family with a gender-equal division of child care. In sum, an articulated gender consciousness is a prerequisite for a gender-equal division of unpaid work, even in gender-egalitarian Sweden.

The importance of work Changing work commitment following the transition to motherhood

We use the longitudinal Young Adult Panel Study to examine changes in subjective work commitment among new mothers in Sweden. With a sample of childless women in 1999, we study changes in work commitment occurring between 1999 and 2003, comparing those who had a child during this period with those who did not. In the 1999 sample, there is no difference between the two groups in terms of work commitment. However, in 2003, women who gave birth during this period are less work committed than other women. Although the changes in women’s work commitment on average are small, our findings indicate that the transition to motherhood – with all of the changes it brings – may lead to a redistribution of priorities and slightly lower work commitment among new mothers compared with non-mothers. Additional analyses indicate that the negative relationship between becoming a mother and work commitment is restricted to the first few years of a child’s life. When women have children older than four years of age, they are not less work committed than non-mothers. We interpret this lower work commitment as a way of temporarily adjusting to the difficulties of combining work and family during the early pre-school years.

Women's work interruptions and career prospects in Germany and Sweden

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on two welfare state regimes with differing degrees of de‐familialisation strategies, Germany and Sweden, to study whether and how womens career interruptions influence their labour market prospects. By comparing women with continuous careers to those with discontinuous careers due to: parental leave or homemaking; unemployment; or other reasons, the authors explore the support for the skill depreciation hypothesis and signalling theory. Depending on the type of welfare state regime, the authors expect women to be subject to varying degrees of career punishment for time spent out of the labour market.Design/methodology/approach – Cox proportional hazard regression models of the transition rate of an upward or downward occupational move among women in the labour market were estimated.Findings – Focusing on upward career moves, the results show no significant relationship between a career interruption and upward occupational moves in Germany. In Sweden, the l...

Work interruptions and young women’s career prospects in Germany, Sweden and the US

This article assesses the impact of discontinuous work histories on young women’s occupational mobility in Germany, Sweden and the US. Women with continuous work histories are compared with those with gaps due to family leave, unemployment, or other reasons. The German Life History Study, the Swedish Level of Living Survey and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to estimate Cox regression models of the transition rate to downward or upward occupational mobility. The results indicate that US women face increased downward mobility with increasing duration of both family leave and unemployment. German women with unemployment experience are also more likely to encounter downward mobility, but no such relationship is found for family leave. In Sweden, family leave experience reduces the chances of upward mobility. Results question the human capital approach, according to which skills should deteriorate at the same rate independent of the reason for the leave.

Institutions as reference points for parents-to-be in European societies : A theoretical and analytical framework

Raising children is a fundamentally important human act. Parenting – understood as allocating time and resources to one’s children – is essential to secure the survival and well-being of children and societies at large. European societies promote distinct gender ideologies of how new parents should allocate their time and resources, thereby directing fathers and mothers to have particular experiences in these emotionally significant relationships (Kremer 2007). These gender ideologies, so we claim, are intertwined with the roles ascribed to the state, market and family in the provision of paid and unpaid forms of work and care. While ascribing unpaid housework and care exclusively to women has been an outcome of the industrial revolution (Pinchbeck 2013; Tilly 1994; Tilly and Scott 1987), new ascriptions have been debated and negotiated on several societal levels since. In the context of parenthood, key actors where these negotiations can be observed are dual-earner couples expecting their first child. At present, the majority of new mothers, but few new fathers, adjust their employment in favour of childcare, thereby accepting negative career consequences, including financial dependence on their partner or the welfare state. These gendered choices penalize women and contribute to persistent gender inequalities in European societies. If we are to undergo a fundamental change in how paid work and care work are divided between men and women in the twenty-first century, we argue that dual-earner parents will be the pioneers. The degree to which these couples are in a position to rethink and negotiate motherhood and fatherhood is, we suggest, highly dependent on the policy context in which couples find themselves. It is therefore necessary to observe

A History of Welfare State and Family/Kin Support

volumes, based on the research project Kin ship and Social Security (KASS). The project is financed by the European Unions Sixth Framework Programme and led by Hannes Grandits (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Patrick Heady (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany). It involves researchers, mainly historians and anthropologists, from eight countries: Italy, Sweden, Germany, France, Austria, Croatia, Poland, and Russia (in the order they appear in the book). One overall aim of the project is to study when, where, and why, during the twentieth century, families/kin were the most important institutions to provide for people, and when and where the welfare state took precedence. The authors would also like to establish a causal link between families/kin and the welfare state. Are wel fare states built in response to some average degree of family and kinship support, or does a strong welfare state lead to reduced family/kinship support? The authors set their ambitions high and at the end of the volume they—as we might have expected—conclude that it is impossi ble to determine the causal direction.