Gender equality and family changes in the work-family culture in Southern Europe

The wider context of the trade-off between work and family is not just a matter of changing preferences. The focus of the literature in this area has been strongly concerned with the identification of factors promoting high levels of female employment than with the location of policy determinants of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International review of sociology 2017-11, Vol.27 (3), p.394
Main Authors: Minguez, Almudena Moreno, Crespi, Isabella
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cultural change
Cultural values
Culture
Employment
Equality
Family roles
Family work relationship
Females
Fertility
Gender equity
Gender inequality
Gender roles
Labor force participation
Labor market
Political action
Sociocultural factors
Women
Working women
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Summary:The wider context of the trade-off between work and family is not just a matter of changing preferences. The focus of the literature in this area has been strongly concerned with the identification of factors promoting high levels of female employment than with the location of policy determinants of cross-national fertility variation. Work-family reconciliation is considered as a political action that gives quite limited and unstable support to encourage women's labour market participation, this results in the poor development of external services and in fewer benefits for women, who have to undertake multiple roles inside and outside the family. The Southern European countries (SEC) model take a specific family-oriented approach to work-family reconciliation. They are family-oriented in that they entrust the family with more responsibilities that in other countries and take a conservative/corporatist-family-oriented approach to work-family reconciliation. The key role and the interconnection between fertility and employment among women, as well as the influence of the gender system and, on the whole, of the welfare system depend on the specific culture of different countries. Based on these theoretical premises, this paper reviews the academic discussion of the meaning of work-family balance concept in the cultural context of SEC from a comparative perspective, taking in account the gender equality debate.
ISSN:0390-6701
1469-9273
DOI:10.1080/03906701.2017.1377406