Rossella Ciccia

Parental leave regulations and the persistence of the male breadwinner model: Using fuzzy-set ideal type analysis to assess gender equality in an enlarged Europe

This paper uses fuzzy-set ideal type analysis to assess the conformity of European leave regulations to four theoretical ideal typical divisions of labour: male breadwinner, caregiver parity, universal breadwinner and universal caregiver. In contrast to the majority of previous studies, the focus of this analysis is on the extent to which leave regulations promote gender equality in the family and the transformation of traditional gender roles. The results of this analysis demonstrate that European countries cluster into five models that only partly coincide with countries’ geographical proximity. Second, none of the countries considered constitutes a universal caregiver model, while the male breadwinner ideal continues to provide the normative reference point for parental leave regulations in a large number of European states. Finally, we witness a growing emphasis at the national and EU levels concerning the universal breadwinner ideal, which leaves gender inequality in unpaid work unproblematized.

The changing worlds and workplaces of capitalism

1. Changing Workplaces, Changing Capitalisms Sean O Riain, Felix Behling, Rossella Ciccia And Eoin Flaherty 2. A Varieties Approach To The Varieties Of Capitalism Lars Mjoset 3. The Variety Of Polanyian Double Movements In Europes Capitalisms Eoin Flaherty And Sean O Riain 4. Classifying Labour Regimes Beyond The Welfare State: A Two Dimensional Approach Rossella Ciccia 5. Reforming Welfare States And Changing Capitalism: Reversing Early Retirement Regimes In Europe Bernhard Ebbinghaus And Dirk Hofacker 6. A Precarious Future: An Irish Example Of Flex-Insecurity Mary Murphy And Camille Loftus 7. Institutionalisation Of Trade Union Activity: Four Indexes And Their Ability To Explain Cross-National Differences In Strike Rate Luis Ortiz And Clara Riba 8. Welfare Beyond The State: Employers As Welfare Providers In Germany And The UK Felix Behling 9. Multinationals Of Industrial Co-Development: Co-Creating New Institutions Of Economic Development Peer Hull Kristensen And Maja Lotz 10. Beyond the Flexibility/Security Divide: Skills, Work Organization and External Employment in the German Knowledge-Based Economy Karen A. Shire And Markus Tunte 11. Work-Life Balance, Working Conditions And The Great Recession Frances Mcginnity And Helen Russell 12. Integrating Work And Political Economy Sean O Riain, Felix Behling, Rossella Cicia And Eoin Flaherty

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Tool for Concept Clarification, Typology Building, and Contextualized Comparisons in Gender and Feminist Research

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

Integrating Work and Political Economy

The preceding chapters have taken us on a tour of European countries, moving from national stories to within organisations, from politics of workplace reorganisation to individual and social consequences, and between work and the economy. Can an integrated sense be made of these diverse journeys across the European economy and its workplaces?

Classifying Labour Regimes beyond the Welfare State: A Two Dimensional Approach

The labour market has been a favoured object of social science research. This is unsurprising considering that it represents both the main mechanism to allocate labour power to productive tasks and the primary source of social inequalities and class formation. However, the current transformations of work and the increasing diffusion of conditions that lie between the categories of employment and unemployment confront both advanced economies and mainstream theories of the labour market with new challenges. Moreover, in spite of the large number of scholarly works that have developed around the classification of advanced economies on several institutional domains, few works have analysed the institutional variety of labour markets per se (Bosch, Lehndorff, and Rubery 2009; Gallie 2007a; Mingione 1997a; Rubery and Grimshaw 2003; Schmid and Gazier 2002).

Changing Workplaces, Changing Capitalisms

Recent decades have seen momentous shifts in the organisation of capitalism, including the range of transformations captured under the grand labels of globalisation, financialisation, liberalisation, and post-industrialism. Not surprisingly, the national forms of capitalist political economy are themselves in flux – even though significant differences remain between social democratic, Christian democratic, and liberal economies (among others) the internal dynamics of each of these models of capitalism are being transformed in important ways (Thelen 2014). At the same time, the experience of work in these worlds of capitalism has undergone dramatic changes. Workers often have more autonomy, work more closely with colleagues within and outside their employer’s company, and can exercise more flexibility in organising their work. However, the pressures of work are often more intense, employment is insecure, rewards are uncertain and likely to depend on competition with others, and a general sense of precarity is widespread.