Gender, crisis and the welfare state: Female labor market outcomes across OECD countries

Rueda D.

Labour market dualization (an increasing separation between insiders and outsiders) has become an influential feature of many OECD economies since 1980s. This paper argues that dualization mitigates the generosity of the welfare state in a significant way. It also investigates the relationship between dualization and policies that protect and insure against unemployment. The compensating role of social policy is shown to be limited in cases where dualization is more significant. The paper then focuses on the relationship between dualization and the welfare state during the present crisis. It emphasizes the influence of insider–outsiderdifferences on both the nature of unemployment and the responsiveness of social policy during the Great Recession.

Huber E., Stephens J.D.

This article analyses the determinants of market income distribution and governmental redistribution. The dependent variables are Luxembourg Income Study data on market income inequality (measured by the Gini index) for households with a head aged 25–59 years and the per cent reduction in the Gini index by taxes and transfers. We test the generalizability of the Goldin–Katz hypothesis that inequality has increased in the USA because the country failed to invest sufficiently in education. The main determinants of market income inequality are (in order of size of the effect) family structure (single mother households), union density, deindustrialization, unemployment, employment levels and education spending. The main determinants of redistribution are (in order of magnitude) left government, family structure, welfare state generosity, unemployment and employment levels. Redistribution rises mainly because needs rise (that is, unemployment and single mother households increase), not because social policy becomes more redistributive.

Part I 1. Introduction: Women's vulnerability to recession and austerity Maria Karamessini 2. From 'Women and Recession' to 'Women and Austerity: A framework for analysis Jill Rubery 3. Challenging the Balkanization of Gender Contracts Jacqueline O'Reilly and Tiziana Nazio Part II 4. Women and Men in the 'Great European Recession' Francesca Bettio and Alina Verashchagina 5. Gender Impacts of the 'Great Recession' in the United States Randy Albelda 6. Iceland in Crisis: Gender equality and social equity Thora Kristin Thorsdottir 7. Gender, Recession and Austerity in the UK Jill Rubery and Anthony Rafferty 8. The Labour Market Impact of the Economic Crisis in Hungary through the Lens of Gender Equality Maria Frey 9. Structural Crisis and Adjustment in Greece: Social regression and the challenge to gender equality Maria Karamessini 10. Ireland in Crisis 2008-2012: Women, austerity and inequality Ursula Barry and Pauline Conroy 11. Employment and Austerity: Changing welfare and gender regimes in Portugal Virginia Ferreira 12. Women, Gender Equality and the Economic Crisis in Spain Elvira Gonzalez Gago and Marcelo Segales Kirzner 13. Living through the Crisis in Italy: The labour market experience of men and women Alina Verashchagina and Marina Capparucci Part III 14. Policy in the Time of Crisis: Employment policy and gender equality in Europe Paola Villa and Mark Smith 15. Gender, Inequality and the Crisis: Towards more equitable development Diane Perrons and Ania Plomien 16. Economic Crisis and Austerity: Challenges to gender equality Maria Karamessini and Jill Rubery

Cho Y., Newhouse D.

This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth experienced by far the largest adverse impacts on employment, unemployment, and wage employment, particularly relative to older adults. The percentage employment reductions, for example, were greatest for youth in each sector of the economy, as firms reacted to the shock by substituting away from inexperienced workers. Employment rates, as a share of the population, also plummeted for men. Larger drops in male employment were primarily attributable to men's higher initial rate of employment, although men's concentration in the hard-hit industrial sector also played an important role. Within each sector, percentage employment declines were similar for men and women. Added worker effects among women were mild, even among less-educated workers. Differences in labor market outcomes across education groups and urban or rural residence tended to be smaller. These findings bolster the case for targeted support to displaced youth and wage employees. Programs targeted to female and unskilled workers should be undertaken with appropriate caution or empirical support from timely data, as they may not benefit the majority of affected workers.

LESCHKE J., JEPSEN M.

Abstract. Introducing the contributions to this special issue of the International Labour Review, this article reviews the broad phases of the economic crisis in the EU since 2008 and highlights the critical role of social policy in mitigating its initial impact on Europeans. However, the crisis and governments' policy responses have also been widening labour market inequalities between different groups within countries, the authors argue, as illustrated by the disproportionate growth of youth employment and their specific focus on gender inequality. Cross-national variations in the content and structure of stimulus and austerity countermeasures are also found to be exacerbating divergence between EU countries.The economic slowdown of 2007, followed by the September 2008 crash after the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, unleashed a worldwide financial crisis that caused global trade to grind to a halt. The impact was swift, deep and global: credit was frozen, orders cancelled, and stock started to pile up in factories. Governments reacted quickly, though with varying force, to counter the adverse effects of the crisis. The EU Member States coordinated a response of countercyclical macroeconomic measures and started bailing out their ailing banks. Typically, stimulus measures supported low-income families and hardhit industries, such as construction and manufacturing, and extended social protection to groups that had previously been excluded or only partially covered. This rapid, Keynesian-style reaction was welcomed by most academics and politicians, although many qualified it as excessively timid given the scale of the crisis. Nonetheless, it is likely to have prevented Europe and the rest of the world from entering a great depression (IMF, 2009). Yet, while the symptoms of the crisis were temporarily addressed, its root causes were not, and this failure of will and vision has dogged the recovery process in Europe ever since.What started as a financial crisis quickly became an economic crisis, then a debt crisis and finally a social crisis. As EU Member States stimulated their economies, activated automatic stabilizers and bailed out banks, the financial markets began to lose confidence in the Governments' ability to honour their burgeoning debts. Doubts were cast, in particular, on the ability of European politicians to agree upon a viable overarching solution for Europe. From mid2010, the response of European Governments, no longer coordinated, changed course: austerity measures were adopted to reduce debt and deficits. A host of European Council meetings generated an impressive stream of agreements and legislative initiatives aimed at reinforcing the European Economic Governance structure. Thus, after stimulating the economy and expanding social security in late 2008 and 2009, in 2010 countries began to cut budgets and make structural reforms in an attempt to stimulate economic growth without increasing public spending. In 2012, this policy of austerity is still ongoing, with no sign whatsoever that it will soon be phased out.Against this background, this introductory article considers whether recent and current efforts at crisis management are widening divisions between both individuals and countries in the EU. As Rahm Emanuel famously urged in 2008, Never let a crisis go to waste!; the question asked here is who wasted it and who did not?The remainder of the article is organized into four main sections. The first gives a general overview of how the crisis was handled in the EU, by identifying its different phases and the countermeasures adopted. The second section discusses the impact these developments had on the labour market and social policy. The third focuses specifically on their consequences for gender equality. The fourth section concludes.Waves of crisis and countermeasuresIt is not possible to pinpoint the different waves of the crisis exactly. Whereas the majority of European countries entered recession in the second quarter of 2008, some countries (e. …

Budig M.J., Misra J., Boeckmann I.

Mothers’ employment and earnings partly depend on social policies and cultural norms supporting women’s paid and unpaid work. Previous research suggests that work–family policies are deeply shaped by their cultural context. We examine country variation in the associations between motherhood and earnings, in cultural attitudes surrounding women’s employment, and in child-care and parental leave policies. We model how cultural attitudes moderate the impact of policies on women’s earnings across countries. Parental leaves and public childcare are associated with higher earnings for mothers when cultural support for maternal employment is high, but have less positive or even negative relationships with earnings where cultural attitudes support the male breadwinner/female caregiver model.

Aidukaite J.

The paper reviews recent socio-economic changes in the 10 new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe and the earlier and latest debates on the emergence of the post-communist welfare state regime. It asks two questions: are the new EU member states more similar to each other in their social problems encountered than to the rest of the EU world? Do they exhibit enough common socio-economic and institutional features to group them into the distinct/unified post-communist welfare regime that deviates from any well-known welfare state typology? The findings of this paper indicate that despite some slight variation within, the new EU countries exhibit lower indicators compared to the EU-15 as it comes to the minimum wage and social protection expenditure. The degree of material deprivation and the shadow economy is on average also higher if compared to the EU-15 or the EU-27. However, then it comes to at-risk-of-poverty rate after social transfers or Gini index, some Eastern European outliers especially the Check Republic, but also Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary perform the same or even better than the old capitalist democracies. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, however, show many similarities in their social indicators and performances and this group of countries never perform better than the EU-15 or the EU-27 averages. Nevertheless, the literature reviews on welfare state development in the CEE region reveal a number of important institutional features in support of identifying the distinct/unified post-communist welfare regime. Most resilient of it are: an insurance-based programs that played a major part in the social protection system; high take-up of social security; relatively low social security benefits; increasing signs of liberalization of social policy; and the experience of the Soviet/Communist type of welfare state, which implies still deeply embedded signs of solidarity and universalism.

Lamartina S., Zaghini A.

AbstractThe paper proposes a panel cointegration analysis of the joint development of government expenditure and economic growth in 23 Organization Economic Cooperation and Development countries. The empirical evidence provides indication of a structural positive correlation between public spending and per-capita gross domestic product (GDP), which is consistent with the so-called Wagner’s law. A long-run elasticity larger than 1 suggests a more than proportional increase of government expenditure with respect to economic activity. In addition, according to the spirit of the law, we found that the correlation is usually higher in countries with lower per-capita GDP, suggesting that the catching-up period is characterized by a stronger development of government activities with respect to economies in a more advanced state of development.

Dolls M., Fuest C., Peichl A.

Hook J.

National context may influence sex segregation of household tasks through both pragmatic decision making and the normative context in which decision making is embedded. This study utilizes 36 time use surveys from 19 countries (spanning 1965–2003) combined with original national‐level data in multilevel models to examine household task segregation. Analyses reveal that men do less and women do more time‐inflexible housework in nations where work hours and parental leave are long. Women do less of this work where there is more public child care and men are eligible to take parental leave. National context affects the character of gender inequality in the home through individual‐ and national‐level pathways.

Palier B., Thelen K.

The French and German political economies have been significantly reconfigured over the past two decades. Although the changes have often been more piecemeal than revolutionary, their cumulative effects are profound. The authors characterize the changes that have taken place as involving the institutionalization of new forms of dualism and argue that what gives contemporary developments a different character from the past is that dualism is now explicitly underwritten by state policy. They see this outcome as the culmination of a sequence of developments, beginning in the field of industrial relations, moving into labor market dynamics, and finally finding institutional expression in welfare state reforms. Contrary to theoretical accounts that suggest that institutional complementarities support stability and institutional reproduction, the authors argue that the linkages across these realms have helped to translate employer strategies that originated in the realm of industrial relations into a stable, new, and less egalitarian model with state support.

Hausermann S., Palier B.

The transition to post-industrialism has generated a range of new tensions between welfare arrangements and labour market performance, which confront today's welfare states with new challenges for employment-friendly recalibration, such as flexicurity, activation and work-care conciliation. Hence, the question of whether, how and to what extent current welfare states are able to adapt to the conditions and needs of post-industrial labour markets has become a major issue in recent welfare state research. This article identifies and discusses key debates in this literature on the politics of employment-friendly reforms. It first focuses on the general capacity for reform in mature welfare states and then discusses regime-specific reform politics, since post-industrialism confronts different welfare regimes with very different challenges. For each regime, the article proposes a range of research frontiers and open debates which we consider particularly relevant and fruitful avenues for future theorizing and research.

Castles F.G., Obinger H.

This article focuses on the notion that the policies and politics of states and nations constitute distinct worlds or clusters. We begin by examining the concept of clustering as it has emerged in the literature on policy regimes and families of nations. We then address a series of empirical questions: whether distinct worlds persist in an era of policy convergence and globalisation, whether policy antecedents cluster in the same ways as policy outcomes and whether the enlargement of the EU has led to an increase in the number of worlds constituting the wider European polity. Our main conclusions are that country clustering is, if anything, more pronounced than in the past, that it is, in large part, structurally determined and that the EU now contains a quite distinct post-Communist family of nations.

Rueda D.

Abstract The analysis in this book disputes entrenched interpretations of the comparative political economy of industrialized democracies. It questions, in particular, the widely-held assumption that social democratic governments will defend the interests of labour. The evidence shows that labour has become split into two clearly differentiated constituencies: those with secure employment (insiders) and those without (outsiders). The book focuses on three policy areas: employment protection (representing the main concern of insiders), and active and passive labour market policies (the main concern of outsiders). The main thrust of the argument is that the goals of social democratic parties are often best served by pursuing policies that benefit only insiders. The implication of the book's insider-outsider model is that social democratic government is associated with higher levels of employment protection legislation but not with labour market policy. The book also argues that there are factors that can reduce insider-outsider differences and weaken their influence on social democratic governments. These hypotheses are explored through the triangulation of different methodologies. The book provides an analysis of surveys and macrodata and a detailed comparison of three case-studies: Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands.

Misra J., Budig M.J., Moller S.

We examine the consequences of welfare state strategies on women's economic outcomes in ten countries. These strategies are 1) the primary caregiver strategy, focused on valuing women's care work; 2) the primary earner strategy, focused on encouraging women's employment; 3) the choice strategy, which provides support for women's employment or caregiving for young children; and 4) the earner-carer strategy, focused on helping men and women balance both care and employment. We analyze the effects of motherhood and marital status on employment rates, annual earnings, and poverty rates. Our study suggests that the strategy taken by the earner-carer strategy may be most effective at increasing equality for both married and single mothers.

Uğur Z.B., Güç A., Kalaycıoğlu D.B., Toprak Ö., Eyerci C., Yildiz S., Toprak M., Demir Z., Demir Ö., Yildiz Ö.F., Çelikkaya R.

This chapter examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on academics in Turkey, focusing on the gender differences. Results show that married female academics experienced the largest increase in time allocated to household chores and childcare. Additionally, the time allocated to research was significantly lower for females than males. Male academics also reported having a higher increase in time allocated to personal matters and communication, such as time spent in Internet and social media, compared to female academics. As time allocation patterns did not change between genders who were living alone but did change between genders who were married, married females’ increased time allocations for household chores and child care do not represent an inherent difference between sexes. Overall, the COVID pandemic was a jolt that revealed all sorts of inequalities between female and male academics. Nevertheless, findings indicated that families were able to handle the pandemic somehow with minimal disputes.

di Bella E., Culotta F.

AbstractOver the past decades, the detail used to describe the socio-economic context through statistical indicators has evolved in several directions, one of which is the increasing territorial detail that has gone down to the sub-national level. Ongoing trends in gender equality measurement confirm the interest in a more geographically detailed analysis. Recent studies presented by the JRC or commissioned by the European Union’s DG-REGIO have gone precisely in this direction. The use of national indicators may in fact result in a ‘compensation’ effect that may hide very important differences within a single national territory. this is more true in those realities where historical/cultural events have led to known internal differences. This chapter discusses the importance of developing subnational level analyses for gender equality and at the same time assesses the availability of regional-level data within the Eurostat system.

Culotta F.

AbstractThe labour market allows individuals to earn a living throughout their lifetime. When it comes to gendered issues, the labour market is also an environment where different outcomes between female and male workers emerge. Differences between women and men naturally exist because of the biological characteristics related to sex differences. The possibilities of maternity and longevity are the most notable examples. Compared with men, women also have less physical power. In fact, the origin of the gender gap in the labour market goes back to the ‘male breadwinner’ model, typical of an industrial economy, in which women’s role was traditionally limited to homemaking activities (Fortin, 2005; Lewis et al., 2008). Physical skills are relevant to the labour supply for an industrial economy.

McManus I.P.

AbstractAlthough the effects of automation on the future of work have received considerable attention, little research has been conducted on the costs of this technological transformation for different populations of workers. This article makes an important contribution as one of the first to analyze the intersectional effects of workforce automation across race and gender in the United States. Multilevel survey data models are employed using two distinct measures of automation job displacement risk for over 1.4 million Americans across 385 occupations. This research demonstrates that the intersection of race and gender matters for individual automation risks. Education, age, disability, and nativity are also significant. These findings indicate that labor market outcomes of job automation will be based not only on differences in human capital but critically on socially constructed identities as well.

Cookson T.P., Ebner N., Amron Y., Kukreja K.

The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have motivated an unprecedented level of global advocacy for gender-responsive and gender-transformative social protection systems that buffer individuals from shocks and vulnerabilities. This turn to a systems approach reflects growing recognition that the presence of one or two social protection programmes targeting women does not guarantee that they are protected throughout the course of their lives and over a wide range of contingencies. Relative to the high levels of interest, however, very little empirical evidence exists about what a gender-responsive or transformative social protection system entails in practice. This article departs from existing literature that focuses on the design and impact of discreet social protection instruments, to present a ‘state of the evidence’ on gender and social protection systems. Drawing on the results of a phased scoping review of academic and policy literature spanning various fields, the article charts the defining features of the existing evidence base, summarizes what is known and identifies pathways for future research. In addition to scholarly analysis, the article offers a comprehensive view of the evidence for policymakers, practitioners, movement leaders and funders working on policy problems from a gender perspective.

Vaterlaus J.M., Spruance L.A., Patten E.V.

Vaterlaus J.M., Spruance L.A., Heiser K.D., Patten E.V.

Stockemer D., Plank F., Niemann A.

The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis has led to shutdowns of the cultural, associational, and economic life in many parts of the world and had a severe impact on gender relations in many societies. This study engages with gender differences in public support of severe infringements of personal and economic freedoms.We use data from an original survey conducted by CINT in the United States and Germany in June 2020. Descriptive statistics both aggregated for the two countries and then split by country as well as multinomial logistic regression analyses gauge gender differences in support of COVID-19 related confinement measures.Men and women rather converge on the level of risk COVID-19 might cause to their health and economic situation, but the two sexes still differ in their assessment of their preferred government reaction to the disease. Women are approximately one-third more likely to advocate stricter infringements, compared to men. This finding illustrates that while both sexes share similar risk evaluations, women are more prudent for their health than men.With this study, we add to the literature on risk aversion and gender differences. In a pandemic situation, women appear to be more risk averse than men.

King T., Perales F., Singh A., Gurrin L., Crammond B.

Objective: This study sought to assess the extent to which gender attitudes are associated with mental health among Australian men and women. Methods: This study used a sample of 26,188 individuals drawn from five waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Gender attitudes were classified into three groups (traditional, moderate-egalitarian and egalitarian), and were constructed from six items. Mental health was measured using the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5). We calculated the magnitude of associations between gender attitudes and mental health, stratified by gender, and adjusted for potential confounding. Results: Compared to men with egalitarian attitudes, poorer mental health was observed among men with moderate-egalitarian (−1.16, 95% confidence interval = [−1.84, −0.49]) and traditional gender attitudes (−2.57, 95% confidence interval = [−3.33, −1.81]). Among women, poorer mental health was observed among those with moderate-egalitarian (−0.78, 95% confidence interval = [−1.34, −0.22]) and traditional attitudes (−1.91, 95% confidence interval = [−2.55, −1.26]) compared to those with egalitarian attitudes. Conclusions: For both men and women, egalitarian gender attitudes were associated with better mental health.

Blanton R.G., Peksen D.

Nakray K.

In Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, using decommodification as a basis, classified advanced capitalist countries into liberal, conservative-corporatist, and social-democratic welfare regimes. Subsequently, Ann Shola Orloff deemed his approach gender blind, and dimensions such as access to paid work and the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household were added to the existing variables of state–market relations, stratification and social citizenship rights. Based on Orloff's theoretical propositions, this paper develops the decommodification measures to classify middle-income countries (MICs). The paper classifies MICs into five clusters based on hierarchical cluster analysis using variables such as GDP per capita, female labour force participation, availability, duration and wage replacement levels and providers of maternity leave benefits and availability of childcare services, legislation on sexual harassment, marital rape and domestic violence, protection orders, the availability of legal aid for civil and criminal matters and the proportion of seats held by women in parliaments.

Pape M., McLachlan F.

A growing body of research suggests that economic crises tend to exacerbate existing gender inequalities, particularly in the realms of paid work and political representation. Translating this to the case of sport, how and why might the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic be felt unevenly by professional female athletes and women leaders? In this essay, the authors reflect on the classic feminist critique of the gendered construction of dependence and consider how its application in the context of sport might aid scholars in making sense of (a) the persistence of gendered precarity and inequality in sport, (b) the prospect of their exacerbation under conditions of a pandemic, and (c) how the current crisis might enable sport to move toward a model of interdependence in which its vastly unequal structures are changed for the better.

King T., Hewitt B., Crammond B., Sutherland G., Maheen H., Kavanagh A.

COVID-19 has delivered a shock to existing gender systems that could recalibrate gender roles, with beneficial effects on population health. The economic arrangements, policy frameworks, and market forces that determine the distribution of paid and unpaid labour across society are powerful structural determinants of health.1 The way that paid and unpaid labour is inequitably divided between men and women is central to the perpetuation of gender inequalities across the globe, and the ways that such divisions can be shifted or disrupted offer critical opportunities to modify the gender-differentiated effects of COVID-19 on health.

Healy A.E.

Abstract Traditional gender role attitudes are often associated with specific religious denominations. However, members of religious denominations are also impacted by other institutions in society. This research uses the European Social Survey to determine how the impact of religious denominations on traditional gender role attitudes varies across welfare regimes. Macro-level analysis examines this relationship with national-level indicators. Religious denomination impacts gender role attitudes, though not uniformly. Public expenditures on social services and working-age cash benefits are negatively related to traditional gender role attitudes, with the strongest impact on attitudes toward men’s right to paid work among Muslims and Eastern Orthodox.

KUSHI S., McMANUS I.P.