Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät der Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg

HS: Educational Systems and Labour Markets in Europe

Influences on Women′s Labour Market

Participation

-

The culture component

Melanie Rottmüller

Semester: 07

Studienfach: Soziologie

Prüfungsfach: Allgemeine Soziologie

Matr.-Nr.:

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Table of Contents

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF ANALYSING WOMEN′S LABOUR MARKET
PARTICIPATION 1

2. THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE ON WOMEN′S LABOUR MARKET
ATTAINMENT 1

2.1 THEORY 2

2.1.1

Preliminary theories including culture 3

2.1.2

Pfau-Effinger′s (1996, 2000, 2005) Gender Culture Models 4

2.2 HYPOTHESES, METHODS AND DATA 7

3. RESULTS 9

3.1 EMPLOYMENT STATUS 9

3.2 ATTITUDES TOWARDS GENDER ROLES 12

3.3 THE RELATION OF EMPLOYMENT STATUS AND ATTITUDES 18

4. CONCLUSION 20

5. REFERENCES 24

6. APPENDIX 25

APPENDIX 1: GENDER CULTURE MODELS IN WEST-EUROPEAN SOCIETIES 25

APPENDIX 2: SPSS SYNTAX AND IMPORTANT OUTPUT 25

APPENDIX 3: CONTRAST OF EVS EMPLOYMENT STATUS (EMPLOYED) AND ILO

ACTIVITY RATE [IN %] 43

APPENDIX 4: EMPLOYMENT STATUS SPLITTED BY COHORTS 45

APPENDIX 5: ITEMS FACTOR 1 (IN EACH CASE THE MOST PRONOUNCED CATEGORY

IS SHOWN (WITH "NEITHER BEING IGNORED) 46

APPENDIX 6: ITEMS FACTOR 2 (IN EACH CASE THE MOST PRONOUNCED CATEGORY

IS SHOWN (WITH "NEITHER" BEING IGNORED) 47

APPENDIX 7: WOMEN′S ACTIVITY RATE BY AFFIRMATION OF EQUAL DIVISION OF

WORK 48

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Influences on Women′s Labour Market Participation

1. The Importance of Analysing Women′s Labour Market
Participation

Since women take part in paid labour the discussion about a gendered labour mar-

ket seems to bring up more and more topics with numerous facets. This reflects the

high proportion of societal interest in issues like inequality, child care, and welfare

state just to mention a few. Women hold a growing number of all jobs in economy

while in most nations they are still responsible for unpaid work at home. Still this

picture coexists with important differences in gender relations between countries

and in labour market positions and experience of women within countries (Fagan

and Rubery 1999).

Aspects of women′s labour are shaped on a national level by two broad catego-

ries of institution: the welfare state and institutions that more directly organise the

labour market. Both regulate the social and economic conditions for women to en-

ter the labour market. (Fagan and Rubery 1999)

Beside the named institutional determinates of women′s labour market partici-

pation, there are cultural determinantes that also affect women′s attainment in the

labour market directly and indirectly through norm that vary cross-nationally. This

study seeks to analyse attitudes towards the family and gender roles to thereby

grasp how and to what extend they are related to women′s labour market participa-

tion.

2. The Influence of Culture on Women′s Labour Market
Attainment

Theoretically there are several approaches that seek to explain women′s employ-

ment patterns. Clearly, characteristics of male and female labour market participa-

tion differ considerably. Although there has been a general change in women′s

education and employment patterns to the extend that equality on the labour market

is not only desired but to some extend already accomplished so that women could

(theoretically) have the same premises to work than men, different types of female

preferences exist depending on the central priority of family and employment (Ha-

kim 2002)

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Influences on Women′s Labour Market Participation

Considering several feminist approaches on welfare state policies, welfares

states shape women′s employment patterns to the respect that they give or withhold

incentives to paid, unpaid work or a combination of both. Those regulating mecha-

nisms refer to explicit and implicit norms of institutions that constantly adjust the

expectations and behaviour of individuals to the general logit of societal guidelines

(Mósesdóttir 1995). Similarly to the typology of Siaroff (1994) who connected

"female work desirability" to the religion of a country, this indicates at least that

cultural determinants like norms, values, and attitudes, shape the central priority of

women, be it directly through role models or indirectly through institutions. At this

point it has to be noted that although the focus in this article is on culture, to predict

women′s labour market participation, neither culture nor institutional factors can

explain the differences between countries on its own. Especially, when focussing

institutional factors like policies, conclusions can conform correlations with

women′s employment patterns, but the causal order is particularly ambiguous

(Matysiak and Steinmetz 2006; Pfau-Effinger 2000; Abrahamson 1999)).

The following section gives a short overview of gendered and to a certain ex-

tend "cultured" welfare typologies which are based on one aspect or another on the

feminist critic on Esping-Andersen′s (1990) Three Worlds. After establishing the

awareness for the culture sensibility of welfare state policies, an approach that is

explicitly based on culture will be used as background for further analysis:. Pfau-

Effinger (1996; 2000; 2005) presented several gender culture models to predict

women′s labour market participation on the basis of gender arrangements. Those

are used to retrace the way of three distinctive welfare states (Finland, Germany,

and The Netherlands), reassess their current position (gender culture model) on the

basis of an descriptive analysis and the importance of each factor for likelihood of

women to participate on the labour market.

2.1 Theory

The presentation of preliminary typologies that used the culture component to a

certain extend has to stay very brief and should sensitise for the meaning of the

norms, values, and attitudes in the context of welfare states and women′s labour

market attainment.

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Influences on Women′s Labour Market Participation

2.1.1 Preliminary theories including culture

As mentioned above, institutions and welfare state policies adapt to the norms

and values of individuals. According to Mósesdóttir (1995) this constitutes in the

social construction of women as workers, housewives, and / or mothers. This leads

respectively to a certain kind of support of the welfare state that permits women to

fulfil their role. The welfare state regulates the relation between the sexes and en-

ables or hinders women′s entrance to the labour market. By using "

the consolida-
tion of the mode of regulation as well as the norms and institutional arrangements
concerning paid and unpaid work

" (Mósesdóttir 1995: 633) as dimensions, Móses-

dóttir identifies three variations of regulation mechanisms that lead to the estab-

lishment of gender relations (liberal (USA), ecclesiastical (Germany), and egalitar-

ian (Sweden)) (Mósesdóttir 1995).

Similarly, Alan Siaraoff (1994) includes the culture component into his typol-

ogy of welfare states by assigning special importance to the "work-welfare-choice"

(Esping-Andersen 1990). This concept includes determinants to identify the link-

ages between labour and social service as well as its amount and recipient. In re-

spect to culture it is important to recognize that labour market participation of

women can be statistically linked to religiosity. Furthermore female work desirabil-

ity is connected with the recipient of social benefits. For example catholic nations

that solely pay social benefits to fathers have the least incentives for women to

work. Creating two indices, Siaroff establishes a quartering of the analysed OECD

countries into Protestant Social Democratic welfare states (Denmark, Finland,

Norway, and Sweden), Protestant Liberal welfare states (Australia, Canada, New

Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States), advanced Christian Democ-

ratic welfare states (Austria, Belgium, France, (West) Germany, Luxembourg, and

the Netherlands), and late female mobilization welfare states (Greece, Ireland, Italy,

Japan, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland) (Siaroff 1994).

The mappings of the several countries by Mósesdóttir and Siaroff may (if

Mósesdóttir did not only use ideal types for her classification) correlate to a large

extend since they both use criteria concerning social citizenship basing on culture.

Social citizenship was also faced by many feminist theories that show that full

integration of women into the labour market meaning that the full provision of child

care is the way to full citizenship of women and therefore gender equality. The

thought that gender equality depends on female labour market attainment though is

denied because this would mean an unacceptable androcentrism and follows the

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Influences on Women′s Labour Market Participation

strategy of "equality in difference" (Meulders und O′Dorchai 2003: 186). This

would mean that traditional home and caring activities of women are being en-

hanced and used as basis of civil rights and political standing. Social citizenship as

well as the respective social praxis is defined and encouraged in different ways in

different welfare states. Facing this feminist discussion often denies the role of cul-

tural values and ideals which are required for an accurate explanation. Pfau-

Effinger (1996) however includes these different cultural attitudes in her compara-

tive analysis and classification of West European gender culture models.

2.1.2 Pfau-Effinger′s (1996, 2000, 2005) Gender Culture Models

Social integration and exclusion of women into the labour market was often

discussed in the context of welfare state policy, social inequality, and social citizen-

ship. According to Pfau-Effinger (2000) the way of conceptualizing social citizen-

ship is in part a more one-sided normative than analytical approach. Furthermore it

is often based on the implicit notion of coherence of welfare state policy and labour

force behaviour of women, the cultural dimension is not integrated into the analysis

systematically, and social change is often not conceptualised. Altogether the nature

of welfare state policy and its definition of social citizenship of workers and carers

should be incorporated into the respective social context and considered as theoreti-

cal frame for cross-national analysis (Pfau-Effinger 2000). For this purpose Pfau-

Effinger (1996) developed a theory to explain international differences of women′s

labour market behaviour and to classify societies in the face of gender specific divi-

sion of labour which systematically accounts for the importance of socio-cultural

conditions. In this regard Tenbruck (1992) refers to the concept of representative

culture. In this sense culture are ideas, meanings and values which are commonly

seen as valid construction of the world and provide the necessary frame of coexis-

tence for social action (Tenbruck 1992). In this sense labour market participation of

women results from the interplay of cultural models and institutional constraints in

the labour market, family, and welfare state (Pfau-Effinger 1996).

Pfau-Effinger′s (1996) analysis is based on the interrelated fundamental terms

gender culture, gender order, and gender arrangements. The term g

ender culture

on the one hand refers to consistent values and guidelines which exist in modern

societies in reference to gender relations and forms of gender specific division of

labour. Those are fixed in the institutional system and therefore stable.

Gender
order

on the other hand are actual detectable structures of the relation of sexes and

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Influences on Women′s Labour Market Participation

the relations between different social institutions in respect to gender specific divi-

sion of work.

Gender arrangements

surround the gender culture and gender order

and result from social bargaining processes. These bargaining processes provide ,

according to Pfau-Effinger (1996), a central basis that particular cultural guidelines

dominate socially and for the principles of arrangement of social institutions in re-

spect to gender relations.

Discrepancies between cultural guidelines and real structures of gender rela-

tions within the scope of the gender order may be caused by non-simultaneous

change in the development of gender culture and order.Therefore the normative

validity of gender culture guidelines may vary to a certain extend. Such asyncronic-

ities and disruptions are the origin of change in dominating guidelines of gender

relations (Pfau-Effinger 1996)

The profile of the respective gender arrangement can be described by the domi-

nant gender culture model. Those base on (1) cultural ideals of the gender specific

division of labour, the central sphere of work for man and women, social valuation

of those spheres and the way dependency between man and women is constructed,

and (2) the cultural construction of childhood, motherhood and fatherhood (Pfau-

Effinger 2000) (see also appendix 1)

Based on those criteria Pfau-Effinger (1996; 2000; 2005) classifies more and

more differentiated gender culture models. In her work on "Changing Welfare

States and Labour Markets in the Context of European Gender Arrangement"

(2000) she identifies six models for West-Europe: the (1) family economic gender

model, the (2) male breadwinner/ female home carer model, the (3) male breadwin-

ner/ female part-time carer model, the (4) dual breadwinner/ state carer model, the

(5) dual breadwinner/ dual carer model und the (6) dual earner/ marketized female

carer model. Pfau-Effinger admits that there also exist hybrids which may most

often develop through on-going change (Pfau-Effinger 2000)1

In contrast to earlier classifications, culture-gender-models allow for analysing

change, meaning that gender arrangements in different countries modernize. By

including discrepancies between cultural guidelines and social acting three ways of

modernization can be identified (Pfau-Effinger 2000). Those especially influenced

and influence women′s labour market participation. Firstly there is the development

of Germany and the Netherlands. Starting point in those nations was respectively

1 For detailed explanation see appendix 1 and the further explanation of modernisation and

hypothesis 1.

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