soh.egb@cbs.dk

Authors: Janine Leshcke, Trine Larsen and Sonja Bekker

Abstract

This paper examines how unemployment insurance benefits (UIB), childcare, and parental leave policies intersect to shape gendered labour market insecurities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. While comparative research has long explored women’s employment and care, it often overlooks how transitions into unemployment affect access to childcare and leave entitlements, and how these entitlements in turn feed back into labour market opportunities. For mothers who remain overrepresented in non-standard and part-time work the risk of exclusion from UIB, coupled with the potential loss of childcare or leave rights, can create self-reinforcing disadvantages.

Our contribution is both empirical and conceptual. Building on transitional labour markets (Schmid & Gazier 2002) and the flexicurity literature (Wilthagen & Tros 2004; Larsen 2010; Bekker & Leschke 2023), we propose a framework for analysing transition security in and out of work, with a focus on how individualized, employment-related rights intersect across subsystems of social protection. Rather than treating UIB, childcare, and parental leave as discrete institutions, we show how they interact to create virtuous or vicious circles of security and insecurity. For example, universal childcare guarantees, as in Denmark and Germany, can buffer job loss by supporting mothers’ re-entry, whereas employment-linked entitlements, as in the UK and Netherlands, may cut off childcare access precisely when it is most needed.

Empirically, we compare eligibility conditions, generosity, and institutional design across the four countries. Our analysis highlights how UIB systems remain structured around standard employment norms, with qualifying conditions based on tenure, hours, or earnings that disproportionately disadvantage women. The exclusion of mini-jobbers in Germany or domestic workers in the Netherlands exemplifies how institutional rules reinforce gendered labour market segmentation. Intersection UIB with care policies, even in Denmark’s universalistic regime, links between unemployment insurance and paid parental leave mean that women in non-standard jobs may lose access to benefits.

By situating these findings in the broader literature on unemployment benefit regimes (Gallie and Paugham 2000) (de)familialisation and (de)genderisation (Saxonberg 2013), we demonstrate how unemployment protection and care policies can either reinforce or mitigate traditional gender roles. The paper argues that existing typologies of unemployment or care regimes insufficiently capture these cross-system dynamics. Our revised framework highlights how institutional arrangements at the nexus of work, unemployment, and care can reproduce inequalities—or, alternatively, open pathways to more inclusive solidarities

Authors: Caroline de la Porte and Manuel Alvariño

Abstract

Work-life balance research has elucidated how policies and institutions shape gendered practices and inequalities in paid employment and unpaid reproductive tasks, especially through policies such as parental leave and care services. Female labour market participation has increased in recent decades, and increasingly policy has focused on decreasing women’s burden in unpaid care work, for instance by involving fathers in parental leave. Yet, while there is focus on the work-care nexus, including from a gendered perspective, the ‘life’ aspect has been understudied in social policy. We propose a novel theorization of the interaction of these three domains, by bridging work, welfare and feminist social policy literature with insights from sociology literature on leisure. This enables us to theorize the intersection between work/life, life/family, and work/family. We offer initial evidence for how policies enable and constrain the distribution of work, care and free time, based on the time use survey database (HETUS).

Author: Anna di Palma

Abstract

Recent research on the welfare state has questioned whether digital tools transform or reinforce traditional institutional features and power relations. Building on arguments about the decentralizing effects of digitalization, this study examines whether, and under what conditions, digitalization has had a centralizing effect on welfare multi-level reconfigurations. Focusing on employment assistance, where standardized tools for collecting local data are increasingly demanded by central governments, it compares Italy and Denmark through a qualitative case study. Preliminary findings indicate that digitalization produced little governance change in Italy, whereas hybrid centralization–decentralization dynamics emerged in Denmark. These differences are explained by contrasting inter-institutional coordination mechanisms: weak political and technical coordination in Italy hindered national tool adoption, while Denmark’s strong vertical ties and institutionalized bargaining facilitated both centralizing and decentralizing shifts. Future research should expand the geographical scope  and further investigate political factors shaping governance reconfigurations in the digital agel

Presented by Barbara Mataloni

Author: Barbara Mataloni

Abstract

Across advanced economies demands for flexibility in work and reduced working hours, such as the four-day working week, are increasing in order for individuals to have more time for family and leisure. While in the work-life balance literature considerable attention is devoted to the allocation of time to paid work and care work, the role of leisure is not systematically analysed. This postdoc project proposal aims to fill this gap by analysing gender differences in leisure from a comparative and theoretically comprehensive perspective. The country cases for the empirical study are Austria, Denmark, South Korea, and Spain. The countries are selected following a most different systems design logic that considers the degree of degenderisation of family policies as well as the public support for leisure. This presentation gives insights into the overall project idea as well as the specific work packages, which focus on (1) the quality of leisure, (2) the recognition of leisure, (3) the role of leisure for work-life balance, and (4) policies promoting leisure. In addition, the presentation will address synergies with the ‘AGILE Work-Life Balance’ project based at Copenhagen Business School

Presented by Patric Emmenegger

Authors: Patric Emmenegger and Paul Marx

Abstract

This paper advances the debate on the agency of political actors in Comparative Political Economy (CPE) theories, focusing on Growth Model Theory (GMT). GMT expects stable coalitions around dominant economic sectors, which support growth strategies through lobbying and ideological influence. Despite the explicit goal to account for the domestic politics of growth models, GMT has not developed a politics model that captures agency, uncertainty, and conflict. It thus retains the core problems of the structuralist approaches common in CPE: the reification of policy processes as ‘blocs’ or ‘coalitions,’ a presentism that infers preferences from outcomes, and a narrow focus on economic interests. We demonstrate these limitations through a case study of Germany’s political debate on the European Economic and Monetary Union—in hindsight a major benefit for Germany’s export-led model. Historical evidence reveals deep divisions among policymakers, shaped by uncertainty, geopolitics, national-identity concerns, and short-term opportunism in response to intra-party and electoral threats. These findings challenge the idea of dominant growth coalitions and point to the need for a more flexible politics model. We propose a revised research agenda that draws on public policy scholarship and cultural schema theory. These approaches can incorporate conflicting motives, interpretive frameworks, and strategic uncertainty in the formation of growth strategies, while also accounting for these strategies’ potential persistence.