Women in and out of paid work : changes across generations in Italy and Britain / Cristina Solera.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Solera, Cristina.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Employment--Great Britain.

Women.

Women--Employment.

Mothers--Employment.

Great Britain.

Women--Employment--Italy.

Italy.

Mothers--Employment--Great Britain.

Mothers.

Mothers--Employment--Italy.

Women--Great Britain--Social conditions.

Social conditions.

Women--Italy--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xii, 228 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Bristol, UK ; Portland, OR : Policy, 2009.

Summary:

Over the last 50 years women's employment has increased markedly throughout developed countries. Women of younger generations are much more likely than their mothers and grandmothers to enter the labour market and stay in it after they marry and have children. Are three changes due only to changes in women's investments and preferences, or also to the opportunities and constraints within which women from their choices? Have women with higher and lower educational and occupational profiles combined family responsibilities with paid work differently? Have their divisions changed?

With an innovative approach, this book compares Italy and Britain, investigating transformations in women's transitions in and out of paid work across four subsequent birth cohorts, from the time they leave full-time education up to their forties. It provides a comprehensive discussion of demographic, economic and sociological theories and contains large amounts of information on changes over time in the two countries, both in women's work histories and in the economic, institutional and cultural contexts in which they are embedded. By comparing across both time and space, the book makes it possible to see how different institutional and normative configurations shape women's lifecourses, contributing to help or hinder work-family reconciliation and to reduce or reinforce gender and class inequalities.

Women in and out of paid work will be valuable reading for students, academics, professionals and policy makers, and for anyone interested in work-family reconciliation, gender and class inequalities, social policy, sociology and women's studies.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

The issue: for whom, when and where has women's labour market attachment increased? 1

The relevance 3

The analytical approach: comparing lifecourses between the micro and the macro 4

Selection of countries and cohorts 7

Outline of the book 10

2 Conceptualising influences on women's employment transitions: from various sociological and economic theories towards an integrated approach 15

Introduction 15

The effects of education, wages and class 16

The effects of preferences, social norms and moral rationalities 22

The effects of the family 29

The effects of the welfare state 34

Labour market effects 42

Conclusion: towards an integrated approach 47

3 The different Italian and British contexts: the link to women's employment patterns 53

Introduction 53

Trends in women's labour market participation 53

Family change: trends in marriage, divorce and childbearing 60

The welfare state 65

Labour market regulation 77

Gender-role attitudes and the domestic division of labour 83

Conclusion 87

4 Method, data and hypotheses 93

Introduction 93

The role of time: longitudinal versus cross-sectional analyses 93

Time and causality 95

Method 98

Data and variables 105

Hypotheses: what has changed across generations in women's employment over the lifecourse in Italy and Britain? 110

5 Who leaves the labour market and who returns? The changing effect of marriage and children 123

Introduction 123

Cohorts, motherhood and types of work history: descriptive evidence 123

Has the trade-off between employment and family responsibilities changed? Evidence on women's transitions in and out of paid work 130

Conclusion 143

6 'Her' and 'his' education and class: new polarisations in work histories 151

Introduction 151

Education and types of work history 151

Does 'his' education and class matter? 160

Conclusion 169

7 Conclusions 173

Summary of the main findings 174

The issue of inequality and 'choice': structural constraints, preferences and individual agency 178

Policy implications: a lifecourse approach combining time with income, decommodification with defamilialisation, at-home with outside-home gender equality 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781861349309

1861349300

OCLC:

231588589