Work-Family Reconciliation Policies and Women's and Mothers' Labor Market Outcomes in Rich Democracies

Abstract

Prominent research has claimed that work-family reconciliation policies trigger “tradeoffs” and “paradoxes” in terms of gender equality with adverse labor market consequences for women. These claims have greatly influenced debates regarding social policy, work, family, and gender inequality. Motivated by limitations of prior research, we analyze the relationship between the two most prominent work-family reconciliation policies (paid parental leave and public childcare coverage) and seven labor market outcomes (employment, full-time employment, earnings, full-time earnings, being a manager, being a lucrative manager, and occupation percent female). We estimate multi-level models of individuals nested in a cross-section of 21 rich democracies near 2005, and two-way fixed effects models of individuals nested in a panel of 12 rich democracies over time. The vast majority of coefficients for work-family policies fail to reject the null hypothesis of no effects. The pattern of insignificance occurs regardless of which set of models or coefficients one compares. Moreover, there is as much evidence that significantly contradicts the “tradeoff hypothesis” as is consistent with the hypothesis. Altogether, the analyses undermine claims that work-family reconciliation policies trigger tradeoffs and paradoxes in terms of gender equality with adverse labor market consequences for women.

Gendered Tradeoffs

“…They find support for the proposition that family policies can support both inclusion and equality, finding evidence that childcare supports both employment and occupational attainment, particularly among higher educated women. Brady et al (2020) methodologically critique these analyses and provide two analyses refuting the conclusions described above. They analyze LIS data both cross-sectionally (21 countries in the mid-2000s) as well as with a country panel using fixed effects models (12 countries, two time periods, mid-1980s/1990s and mid-2000s).…”

“…Most studies use hierarchical models with individuals nested within countries. Although these models have been used extensively in the literature, they are criticized in several ways: they are sensitive to the selection and number of countries included, which are typically less than thirty and often much less; data tend to be cross-sectional, thus causal claims are questionable; and many key findings in the literature are based on data from the 1990s, which are now dated (Brady, Blome, & Kmec, 2020;Steiber & Haas, 2012).…”

Bringing Women on Board? Family Policies, Quotas and Gender Diversity in Top Jobs

“…The second condition, 'Widespread Childcare Services' (CC), is also captured by two sub-indicators covering spending on childcare and childcare coverage, the latter of which is operationalised by enrolment rates in line with previous studies (e.g. Brady et al, 2020). Although these measures do not capture the full characteristics of a country's childcare system, they are widely used due to the availability of cross-national data and their function as common 'yardsticks' between countries (Jensen, 2009).…”

“…Some recent studies suggest that women's chances of reaching managerial and lucrative positions are no different in social-democratic countries than elsewhere (e.g. Brady et al, 2020;Korpi et al, 2013). Indeed, most scholars find neutral or positive impacts of public childcare on higher-earning women's careers (e.g.…”

“…Furthermore, those studies that do typically focus on a small number of countries (⩽ 10) and neglect to disaggregate the unique contributions of individual policies (e.g. Grosvold et al, 2007;Mensi-Klarbach and Seierstad, 2020), which can have diverse and sometimes contradictory effects (Brady et al, 2020;Budig et al, 2016;Korpi et al, 2013). Iannotta et al (2016) contribute to filling this 'gap' in the literature on women on boards.…”