Seminar Abstracts

Author: Martin Mehl

Abstract

Who supports European Social Policies? This paper critically evaluates the public attitude of establishing a European Union-wide social benefit scheme. The first part centers around the analysis of the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS), which includes the question for supportiveness for a European welfare mechanism. This mechanism is set out to guarantee a minimum standard of living in the EU financed by transfer payments of its Member States. The second part then combines these findings with mi- crosimulations of EU-SILC data to estimate financial requisites for implementing such a scheme. I identify the financially most vulnerable households within the EU as well as countries becoming net contributor or net recipient under such a European welfare mechanism. This paper provides nuanced insights into the complex interplay between individual household characteristics, their support for a EU-wide social benefit scheme, their expectations of national contributions, and the actual national contributions of the household’s home country. I test this model empirically by applying multiple re- gressions that show living in a net contributor nation comes with (1) a weaker support for European transfers and (2) the expectation that a European welfare state would lead to a lower social benefit level in their home country. Individual household charac- teristics such as income, gender, age, marital status, having children, life satisfaction, and economical satisfaction as well as education go as expected. Therefore, this study investigates public perceptions surrounding a common European welfare state. By examining both survey data and microsimulations, we offer nuanced insights into in- dividual and national factors influencing support for such a policy, providing valuable perspectives for the understanding of public sentiment in the European context

Presented by Sabine Irbe

Author: Sabine Irbe, Coralie Wirtz, and Kai Storm

Abstract

Research on child penalty shows that gender pay gap and mothers’ labour market participation are intricately intertwined. Thus, to explain pay gap better, we need to understand mothers’ participation in the labour market. To do this, this paper distinguishes between gender and motherhood norms when analysing mothers’ labour market participation. We argue that distinguishing between gender and motherhood norms is critical because both impact how far mothers may be able and willing to spend time apart from their children. This affects not just what kind of working arrangements mothers opt into, but also the pay they can expect. We analyse mothers’ employment rates in 127 countries in relation to factors such as unpaid care work, fertility, suffrage or ministerial positions. First, we find that, worldwide, there is a clear difference between how women (without children) and mothers participate in the labour market – and that this difference can meaningfully explain gender inequalities in terms of unequal pay. Secondly, our findings clearly indicate that improved gender equality for women in general does not automatically lead to better outcomes for mothers. Third, our analysis revealed that women’s political agency accumulates and might have a greater impact if other burdens, such as childcare, decrease.

Presented by Anna Helgøy

Author: Anna Nordnes Helgøy

Abstract

The ‘mental load’ — the organizational dimension of household labor — is highly gender unequal, whereby women have substantially higher loads compared to men. Exacerbated by parenthood, a high mental load has been shown to negatively affect key gender equality outcomes, such as political- and labor market participation. Equalizing the mental load between genders is therefore paramount in the pursuit of gender equality. This article argues that family policy attitudes represent what political action is in demand by those experiencing different levels of mental load inequality in their households, and is therefore an important starting point in countering this aspect of household gender inequality. Using three-wave Norwegian panel data, it examines whether within-person changes in the mental load lead to changes in family policy attitudes. Findings show that as the mental load increases for an individual, so does their opposition to optional familialism in family policy. This implies that one political action demanded by those experiencing mental load inequality is a family policy approach that allows for active father involvement measures.

Authors: Lasse Aaskoven, Benjamin Egerod, and Frederik Kjøller

Abstract

While women are consistently under-represented in the upper echelons of the bureau- cracy we have little knowledge about why that is. In this paper, we investigate when and why women’s careers stagnate using comprehensive data on personnel records on all civil servants employed in the Danish ministerial bureaucracy from 1999 through 2019. We show that women’s careers stagnate at the earliest possible stage: a lower proportion of women ever enter into the pipeline from which junior management is recruited, and when they do, they do so at a higher age than men. This exacerbates gender imbalance at all levels of management. Next, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that women’s probability of entering the management pipeline and all management positions drops compared to men, when they get a man as the leader of their unit. Heterogeneity analyses show that the negative effect on women’s careers is concentrated among women younger than 45 years of age and in units where there is a high proportion of women managers. This suggests that male senior managers antici- pate parental leave disruptions could strain the stability of their junior management. Although we find evidence for other mechanisms as well, they do not seem to have the same explanatory power.

Presented by Simone Manfredi

Author: Simone Manfredi

Abstract

Background.

Social capital can drive local ability to meet community needs, both promoting citizen claim for public services and enabling local collaborative governance. Italy is an example of non-social investment reform without clear provision to tackle new social risks. An inadequate supply of childcare, a defamilisation instrument, is identified as a key factor explaining the coexistence of low female labour market participation and low birth rates. 

Objectives.

Exploiting Italian territorial variation, this study theorizes how and test whether social capital is an explaining variable in the divergent provision of public childcare services. 

Methods.

A regression analysis is held adopting the Italian provinces (NUTS-3 level) as the unit of analysis (n=107). The provision of public childcare services (dependant variable) is operationalized by the number of available public spot every 100 children aged 0-2. The social capital embedded within the community of a Province is operationalized by two composite indicators accounting for its bonding (strong “family” ties) and bridging (weak trust-based ties) dimensions. Additional control variables are included in the model. 

Results.

The computed proxies of social capital are good predictor of supply of public childcare at Italian province level. Controlling for female employment rate and average per-capita disposable income, bonding social capital exhibits a strong negative regression coefficient (-1.57) and bridging social capital a strong positive coefficient (+2.57), both statistically significant (p-value<0.05). 

Conclusions.

This study contributes to the understanding of the characteristics of the Italian North–South gap in the specific policy field of Early Childhood Education and Care. It introduces the concept of social capital to the social investment literature, theorizing and empirically showing how an uneven distribution of social capital predicts the uneven distribution of public childcare services. Future studies need to substantiate these preliminary findings by looking at demand side (individuals) and supply (institutional) side mechanisms.