Juggling work and family: Work life conflict across four European countries

Jacqueline Scott and Anke Plagnol

Gender Inequalities in the 21st Century

26-27 March 2009, Queens’ College, Cambridge

Department of Sociology

Gender equality on the slide

• ISSP data of gender role attitudes contradict myth that societies attitudes are becoming increasingly egalitarian

• In some countries (e.g. UK and USA) there is increasing concern about how women’s employment conflicts with family wellbeing

• Story one of attitudes supporting mothers work, but then retreat…

** GeNet book on Women and Employment

Back to the Kitchen Sink

• Third of working mums are quitting their full time jobs for part time work or giving up altogether.

• Young children whose parents work full time, may perform less well at school.

Policy debate about Mum’s work and fertility

• Mother’s employment helps support families but is it also undermining family formation?

• What is the pattern across Europe in family formation and working mums?

• European Social Survey data make clear that nations differ markedly and working is less likely to conflict with family formation where childcare widely available

• But this unlikely to explain why countries like Ireland and France have high fertility and low work while others like Germany have low fertility and more working mothers. With UK somewhere in between….

Fertility rate versus working mothers

Data: European Social Survey (ESS)

• Attitudes, values, beliefs – behaviour

• Bi-annual

• 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010

• Small sample; effective size 1500

• Central co-ordination

• National implementation

• Core and rotating modules

• 2004 & 2010 Module on family, work & wellbeing

Data

Five measures of Work Life Conflict (WLC)

1. How often do you keep worrying about work problems when you are not working?

2. How often do you feel too tired after work to enjoy the things you would like to do at home?

3. How often do you find that your job prevents you from giving the time you want to your partner or family?

4. How often do you find that your partner or family gets fed up with the pressure of your job?

5. How often do you find it difficult to concentrate on work because of your family responsibilities?

(Never, hardly ever, sometimes, often, always)

Data

Our sample includes

• Respondents who are employed and in partnerships

• Prime working ages: 18-65

Four countries with different female employment and fertility patterns

Percentage of the women in our sample who are employed FT or PT:

part-time full-time

Germany 32.92 67.08

France 18.95 81.05

United Kingdom 41.46 58.54

Ireland 43.16 56.84

Work-life conflict across country by Gender and Work hours (full vs part-time)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Germany France UnitedKingdom

Ireland

Males

PT Females

FT Females

Do measures of WLC matter?

Measures of WLC are correlated with other indicators of well-being

• Significant negative correlation with satisfaction (-0.1343) and happiness (-0.1171)

• Significant negative correlation with subjective health (-0.0854)

Does WLC only depend on work hours?

Country differences in work strategies (couples 18-65)

0

10

20

30

40

50

Germany France UK Ireland

%

Dual career

Alternate commitments

Male breadwinner

Female breadwinner

Both not employed

Couple strategies for those whose main activity paid work (age 18-65)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Germany France UK Ireland

%

Dual career

Alternate commitments

Male breadwinner

Female breadwinner

Work-life conflict by couple strategies (for those whose main activity paid employment)

0

2

4

6

Germany France UK Ireland

Dual career Alternate commitments

Male breadwinner Female breadwinner

Does WLC only depend on work hours?

OLS regressions (4 countries), dependent variable WLC

w/o hours With hours

Dual career ref ref

Alt commitment -0.519*** ns

Male breadwinner -0.521*** -0.292*

Female breadwinner 0.062 0.491**

Female -0.759*** -0.173

Traditional values ns ns

Child under 12 in hh 0.323*** 0.326***

Log work hours 1.708***

r2 0.0445 0.1306

N 2457 2457

Is this a matter of unpaid work strategies?

• Men in male breadwinner model couples may be less pressured by their partners to contribute to unpaid work and family life

• Measures of unpaid work arrangements: Who does most of the housework on a typical weekday?

1. Both partners equally

2. Mostly the woman

3. Mostly the man

4. Outside help

Unpaid work strategies

• Even in female breadwinner couples, the majority of housework is done by the woman (all four countries)

Unpaid work

Paid work BalancedMostly female

Mostly male

Outside help

Dual career 16.4 71.75 7.92 3.93

Alternate commitments 9.84 82.38 4.35 3.43

Male breadwinner 4.93 88.36 3.98 2.73

Female breadwinner 11.86 58.32 25.23 4.6

Unpaid work

• Unpaid work hour arrangements do not seem to matter much for work life conflict

• Having outside help is weakly associated with lower WLC

• Problem with how unpaid work is measured: subjective evaluations

What comes next?

• Examine how institutional variations across countries e.g. childcare affects work-life conflict, family formation and couple work strategies

• Lobby ESS to improve work-life balance measures (e.g. stop paid work myopia) especially given that the ‘Gallie’ module is being repeated in order to take advantage of the ‘opportunity’ of examining how experiences change with the impact of the recession.

• Try to get handle on way women’s employment, family formation and work-life conflict link at individual level (e.g. using UK and German household panel data)

Thank you

Questions?