Thèses sur le sujet « Work and family – Europe – History »

Defence date: 2 February 2007
Examining Board: Professor Jaime Reis; Professor Michael Anderson; Professor Maria Karamessini; Professor Martin Kohli
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
In this study I explore the low participation rates of southern women in paid work during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s through the phenomenon of work-family conflict in an 'unconventional' way.

Temes que relacionen la família amb el treball estan captant cada vegada més l'atenció tant del sector privat com del públic. La Unió Europea promou assumptes com la baixes motivades pels fills, l'atenció als menors, l'equilibri entre la vida personal i el treball, i la flexibilitat horària. Així mateix promou canvis a l'entorn, l'estructura i l'organització del lloc de treball. En una línea similar, una creixent pressió per part de la població ha despertat l'interès de les principals empreses per millorar l'equilibri entre ocupació i vida privada dels seus empleats. Avui dia moltes empreses destaquen les preocupacions per la qualitat de vida com un tema de prioritat social. Però on es troba l'origen d'aquesta major conscienciació dels governs i les empreses i una major voluntat d'invertir en la millora de l'equilibri feina-vida dels ciutadans i els empleats? Les causes d'aquesta major receptivitat són en general les conseqüències de canvis sociodemogràfics. A les darreres dècades les dones s'han sumat a les files dels treballadors a una escala massiva. Motivades pel moviment a favor de les dones, que va aconseguir difondre la seva reclamació per la igualtat d'oportunitats tant a l'educació com a l'ocupació, les dones ara es dediquen a tot tipus d'activitats fora de la llar. Les dones de tota Europa, per terme mitjà, ocupen el 40% de les ocupacions a temps complet i el 32% dels llocs directius. La pressió econòmica, en forma de reducció de salaris per als homes, va fer que un gran nombre de dones sortissin a treballar a temps parcial, i va obligar a homes i dones per igual a augmentar les seves jornades laborals per a poder mantenir el seu nivell de vida. L'aportació de dos sous s'ha convertit en una necessitat econòmica per a un nombre creixent de famílies. A més, cada vegada hi ha més progenitors solters, parelles a les quals ambdós tenen una carrera professional, i homes plenament dedicats a cuidar dels seus fills. Per a aquestes persones, i d'altres interessades a compaginar el treball amb la família, trobar un equilibri entre les dues esferes s'ha convertit en una qüestió primordial de la seva vida. Les empreses adopten estratègies per a superar aquests problemes tot aplicant polítiques i programes dirigits a aportar als treballadors recursos que els ajuden a compaginar la dedicació a la família amb la seva carrera professional. Les típiques pràctiques inclouen horaris flexibles, jornades laborals més breus, un lloc de treball compartit per més d'un treballador, el tele-treball, serveis d'atenció per als fills, i arranjaments especials de permisos de maternitat per poder ajudar als treballadors a satisfer les necessitats familiars i personals. Se sap que aquest tipus de pràctiques eleven el nivell de satisfacció laboral, milloren l'ètica i la motivació en el lloc de treball, redueixen l'absentisme i els índexs d'abandó; augmenten la satisfacció de la compaginació entre treball i família, i disminueixen l'estrès i els conflictes que comporta. No obstant això, diversos estudis també han revelat poca o cap relació entre els beneficis que s'ofereixen als empleats o els que usen i el conflicto família-feina. La disponibilitat formal de pràctiques família-feina per si soles tenien una modesta incidència en els resultats de valor tant en el cas dels individus com per a les organitzacions. Els experts proposen que més aviat són altres factors els quals incideixen més a l'hora de reduir el conflicte o estrès família-feina, com és el cas de rebre suport per part dels companys i dels supervisors; a més que els empleats entenguin que poden utilitzar aquestes polítiques sense témer conseqüències negatives a la seva feina ni a la seva carrera professional. Així que des de la investigació i des de la pràctica s'assenyala la importància d'anar més enllà de la formulació de practiques feina-vida cap a un canvi a la cultura de l'organització. El desenvolupament d'una cultura feina-vida que dóna suport i valora la integració del treball i la vida familiar dels empleats es converteix en una necessitat per a poder reduir la falta de sintonia entre la feina i la família. Les investigacions futures haurien de començar a fixar-se en allò que contribueix a una cultura del suport i allò que restringeix la capacitat d'una organització per a crear una cultura laboralfamiliar per als seus empleats.
Los temas que relacionan la familia con el trabajo están captando cada vez más la atención tanto del sector privado como del público. La Unión Europea promueve asuntos como la bajas motivadas por los hijos, la atención a los menores, el equilibrio entre la vida personal y el trabajo, y flexibilidad horaria. Asimismo promueve cambios en el entorno, la estructura y la organización del lugar de trabajo. En una línea similar, una creciente presión por parte de la población ha despertado el interés de las principales empresas por mejorar el equilibrio entre empleo y vida privada de sus empleados. Hoy en día muchas empresas destacan las preocupaciones por la calidad de vida como un tema de prioridad social.
¿Pero dónde se halla el origen de esta mayor concienciación de los gobiernos y las empresas y una mayor voluntad de invertir en la mejora del equilibrio trabajo-vida de los ciudadanos y los empleados? Las causas de esta mayor receptividad son por lo general las consecuencias de cambios sociodemográficos. En las últimas décadas las mujeres han engrosado las filas de los trabajadores a una escala masiva. Motivadas por el movimiento a favor de las mujeres, que consiguió difundir su reclamación por la igualdad de oportunidades tanto en la educación como en el empleo, las mujeres ahora se dedican a todo tipo de actividades fuera del hogar. Las mujeres de toda Europa, por promedio, ocupan el 40% de los empleos a tiempo completo y el 32% de los puestos directivos. La presión económica, en forma de reducción de salarios para los hombres, hizo que un gran número de mujeres salieran a trabajar a tiempo parcial, y obligó a hombres y mujeres por igual a aumentar sus jornadas laborales para poder mantener su nivel de vida. La aportación de dos sueldos se ha convertido en una necesidad económica para un número creciente de familias. Además, cada vez hay más progenitores solteros, parejas en las que ambos tienen una carrera profesional y hombres plenamente dedicados a cuidar de sus hijos. Para estas personas y otras interesadas en
compaginar el trabajo con la familia, encontrar un equilibrio entre las dos esferas se ha convertido en una cuestión primordial de su vida. Estrategias adoptadas por las empresas para superar estos problemas aplican políticas y programas dirigidos a aportar a los trabajadores recursos que les ayudan a compaginar la dedicación a la familia con su carrera profesional. Las típicas prácticas incluyen tiempo flexible, jornadas laborales más breves, un puesto de trabajo compartido por más de un trabajador, tele-trabajo, servicios de cuidados para los hijos y arreglos especiales de permisos de maternidad para ayudar a los trabajadores satisfacer necesidades familiares y personales. Se sabe que este tipo de prácticas elevan el nivel de satisfacción laboral, mejoran la ética y la motivación en el lugar de trabajo, reducen el absentismo y los índices de abandono; aumentan la satisfacción de la compaginación entre trabajo y familia, y disminuyen el estrés y los conflictos que conlleva. Sin embargo, varios estudios también han revelado poca o ninguna relación entre los beneficios que se ofrecen a los empleados o los que usan y el conflicto familia-trabajo. La disponibilidad formal de prácticas familia-laborales por sí solas tenían una modesta incidencia en los resultados de valor tanto en
el caso de los individuos como para las organizaciones. Los expertos proponen que más bien son otros factores los que inciden más a la hora de reducir el conflicto o estrés familia-laboral, como es el caso de recibir apoyo por parte de compañeros y supervisores, además de la percepción por parte de los empleados de que puedan utilizar estas políticas sin temer consecuencias negativas en su trabajo ni en su carrera profesional. Así que desde la investigación y la práctica se señala la importancia de ir más allá de la formulación de prácticas trabajo-vida hacia un cambio en la cultura de la organización. El desarrollo de una cultura trabajo-familia que apoya y valora la integración del trabajo y la vida familiar de los empleados se convierte en una necesidad para poder reducir la falta de sintonía entre trabajo y familia. Las investigaciones futuras deberían empezar a centrarse en lo que contribuye a una cultura del apoyo y lo que restringe la capacidad de una organización para crear una cultura trabajo-familiar para sus empleados.
Work-family issues are attracting increasing attention at both the public and the private level. The European Union promotes matters such as parental leave, childcare, work-life balance, flexible working hours, and encourages changes in the environment, structure and organisation of work. Along similar lines, growing public pressure has led to interest from leading companies to improve the work-life balance of their employees. Nowadays, many companies highlight life concerns as a priority social issue. But what initiated this increased awareness of governments and companies to invest in improving the work-life balance of their citizens and employees? The origins of this augmented responsiveness are mainly consequences of socio-demographic changes. In the last decades females have entered the labour force on a massive scale. Motivated by the women's movement, which successfully expanded females' claim to equality in educational and employment opportunities, females are now engaged in all kinds of activities outside the home. On average, females across Europe hold 40% of full-time jobs and 32% of management positions. Economic pressure, in the form of wage reductions for males, required a large number of females to enter the workplace on a part-time basis, and forced both males and females to increase their overall working hours in order to maintain their living standards. Dual-earning has become an economic necessity for an increasing number of families. In addition, there are a growing number of single parents, dualcareer couples, and fathers heavily involved in parenting. For these individuals and for others interested in both work and family, balancing the two arenas has become a major life issue. Strategies adopted by companies to overcome these problems enact policies and programs aimed at providing employees with resources to help them manage their work-family lives. Typical practices include flexitime, shorter working hours, jobsharing, tele-working, childcare services and special maternity leave arrangements to help workers meet family and personal needs. Practices have been found to raise employee satisfaction; work ethics and motivation; reduce absenteeism and staff turnover rates; elevate satisfaction with the balance between work and family; and diminish related stress and work-family conflict. However, several studies also found either nonexistent or weak relationships between benefits offered or used by employees and work-family conflict. The formal availability of work-family practices alone had modest relationships with outcomes of value to both individuals and organisations. Scholars rather propose that other factors are more important for reducing work-family conflict or stress, such as having supportive colleagues and supervisors, as well as the perception that employees can use these policies without fearing negative job or career consequences. Therefore researchers and practitioners point out the importance of moving beyond the formulation of work-life practices to a change in organisational culture. The development of a work-family culture which supports and values the integration of employees' work and family lives becomes a necessity for reducing work-family mismatch. Future research should begin focussing on what contributes to a supportive culture and what constrains an organisation's ability to create a workfamily culture for its employees.

The rise in female labour supply in developed economies has stimulated research on the combination of family and work. The aim of this thesis is to provide some empirical evidence on the factors driving family formation and mothers' employment across Europe over the period 1960-2000. After the Introduction, Chapter 2 describes a theory to explain the elements (e.g. public provided childcare, taxation system, subsidies to childcare, flexi-time at work, and unemployment rates) that affect the sign of the correlation between fertility and employment. The two subsequent chapters are both divided into two core sections: a Spanish case and a comprehensive European comparison (Belgium, West-Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden). Chapter 3 analyses how the labour market affects individual fertility decisions (i.e. marriage/cohabitation, first, second and third birth) using a Cox hazard approach. Results suggest that if we would like to reverse the declining path in fertility in Spain, we need to accomplish three main things: overturn the negative impact of female employment on childbearing through policies that facilitate reconciliation of work and family, reduce the instability of working patterns, and implement policies that raise male employment. Interestingly, the cross-country comparison reveals that Sweden is the only country where being employed encourages earlier childbearing. Chapter 4 investigates transitions from employment to non-employment around childbearing and its evolution across time. The European comparison suggests that the probabilities of staying-on employed are different across countries and these have changed substantially over the period 1973-93. This evolution is mainly explained by the taxation system (joint vs. separate), the removal of barriers to part-time work and the increase in education. Chapter 5 focuses on female employment in the UK between 1974-2002. A first section aims to quantify how much of the rise in female participation is due to changes in the structure of the female population and how much is caused by changes in behaviour. A second section investigates the rise in the employment of married mothers. We isolate those birth cohorts whose mothers experienced significant increases in employment and relate those to changes in policies (maternity rights, taxation and childcare). Maternity rights have induced a change in behaviour toward returning to work in the first year post-birth, mostly among better-educated and higher-paid mothers.

This thesis discusses the ideals of behaviour which sought to govern family life and which were common currency in England and northern Europe, how they were constructed, and how the late medieval gentry and nobility interacted with them. Hagiography, sermons, and courtesy literature all explicitly sought to influence the views and behaviour of their audiences, whilst the letter collections of the Pastons, Plumptons, Stonors, Celys, and Armburghs offer an insight into the self-perceptions of the recipients of this didactic material. Much of this material has been studied, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Images in books, often marking key moments in a typical life-cycle, supported, extended, even contradicted the notions inculcated by these texts, were increasingly relevant to later medieval daily lives, and both influenced their audience and were used by their audience as a form of self-fashioning. The five chapters of this thesis each explore a different aspect of the medieval lifecycle. Chapters One and Two take the foundation of the household, marriage, as their starting point, discussing courtship and the ideal marriage ceremony, as well as the attributes and behaviour of the ideal spouse. Chapter Three turns to how this household operated on a wider scale, demonstrating how lords were caught between Christ's example and the pressures of lavish lay display when building networks of friendship. Chapter Four considers the genesis of a new generation: how images and texts conveyed sometimes different notions of the ideal mother and father, the location of the household as a place of learning, and the importance of models when shaping the development of the ideal child. Lastly, Chapter Five investigates the end of the lifecycle, death, and how images and texts worked together to propound the central medieval idea of a 'good death'. Consideration is given throughout this thesis to how the norms of behaviour communicated by texts and images may be studied.

The general focus of this thesis is on how the family, work and the welfare system are intertwined. A major determinant is the way responsibilities are shared by the state, the market and civil society in different welfare state regimes. An introductory chapter will therefore be dedicated to the development of the social dimension in the process of European integration. A first chapter will then go deeper into the comparative analysis of welfare state regimes, to comment on the provision of welfare in societies with a different mix of state, market and societal welfare roles and to assess the adequacy of existing typologies as reflections of today’s changed socio-economic, political and gender reality. Although they stand strong on their own, these first two chapters also contribute to contextualising the research subject of the remainder of the thesis: the study and comparison of the differential situation of women and men and of mothers and non-mothers on the labour markets of the EU-15 countries as well as of the role of public policies with respect to the employment penalties faced by women, particularly in the presence of young children. In our analysis, employment penalties are understood in three ways: (i) the difference in full-time equivalent employment rates between mothers and non-mothers, (ii) the wage penalty associated with motherhood, and (iii) the wage gap between part-time and full-time workers, considering men and women separately. Besides from a gender point of view, employment outcomes and public policies are thus assessed comparatively for mothers and non-mothers. Because women choose to take part in paid employment, fertility rates will depend on their possibilities to combine employment and motherhood. As a result, motherhood-induced employment penalties and the role of public policies to tackle them should be given priority attention, not just by scholars, but also by politicians and policy-makers.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim of this dissertation is to explore various dimensions of work–life balance in Europe. I examine the extent to which institutional factors, working conditions and individual resources influence individuals’ capabilities to have a family and engage in family life. The theoretical framework is inspired by Amartya Sen’s capability framework, a multi-dimensional approach that provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between institutional contexts and individual capabilities. Four studies have been conducted. The first study focuses on women’s short-term childbearing intentions in ten European countries and finds that the association between such intentions and economic uncertainties varies by the policy support for work-family reconciliation in the country as well as individual factors, such as her educational level, and her number of children. The second study addresses the impact of family-friendly working conditions on young adult women’s childbearing behaviour in Sweden, showing the importance of family-friendly working condition for the transition to motherhood of less educated childless women with low income, and for second births of low educated mothers. The third study analyses gender differences in perceived work–home conflict in ten European countries, and the importance of work-family policies and gender norms. I find that gender differences are more pronounced in countries with weaker support for work-family reconciliation and more traditional gender norms. The fourth study focuses on tensions between work and family demands that parents in Hungary and Sweden experience, and on their capabilities to make claims for work–life balance. We find greater agency inequalities for Hungarian parents for claims making for and achievement of work-life balance, in contrast to a strong sense of entitlement to exercise rights to care among Swedish parents, which reflect country variations in policy supports for work−life balance, working time regimes and social norms regarding work and care.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Submitted. Paper 2: Submitted. Paper 3: Submitted.

This thesis examines the work of married women in working-class families in Ottawa in 1871. It demonstrates that home production by women for consumption, sale and/or exchange, together with arrangements of household structures, made a primary and fundamental contribution to the survival of the family unit. Women laboured and their labour was vital. Using the 1871 manuscript census, the study analysed the myriad of ways that married women utilized their available resources to reduce expenditures and to increase the wage-based family income. It was the work of women that provided some protection against the insecurity of inadequate wages, seasonal employment, illness or death.

This dissertation analyses the relationship between social work and social policy in Europe from a comparative historical perspective. Central to this analysis is the dynamic interplay of forces which led to the consolidation of the European nation state as a welfare state, including the current crisis of the welfare consensus. The role of social work emerges as central to the project of national cultural integration, a perspective which frequently gets overlooked from a purely national perspective. Social works enmeshment with this nation state project is revealed in the current transformation of the welfare states in the light of neo-liberal principles and in the context of globalization. This perspective underlines the need for the development of intercultural communicative competences and in particular a consistent anti-racist approach in social work. At the same time the particular position in relation to social policy requires the development of research methods specific to the discipline in the light of its hermeneutic tasks.
Die Arbeit behandelt die Beziehung zwischen Sozialer Arbeit und Sozialpolitik in Europa aus vergleichender historischer Perspektive. Untersucht wird die Dynamik des Nationalstaats und seine Konsolidierung als Wohlfahrtsstaat bis zur gegenwärtigen Krise des Wohlfahrtskonsenses. Dabei gewinnt die Rolle der Sozialen Arbeit in der Aufgabe kultureller Integration besondere Bedeutung, da dies aus rein nationaler Sicht oft nicht zu erkennen ist. Ihre Verkoppelung mit dem Nationalstaat wird besonders deutlich in der gegenwärtigen Transformation durch neo-liberale Prinzipien im Kontext der Globalisierung. Hieraus ergeben sich neue Aufgaben für die Soziale Arbeit, insbesondere in Bezug auf die Entwicklung interkultureller kommunikativer Kompetenzen und eines konsistenten antirassistischen Ansatzes. Gleichzeitig erfordert die besondere sozialpolitische Position die Entwicklung disziplinspezifischer Forschungsansätze im Lichte der hermeneutischen Bedeutung der Sozialen Arbeit.

The thesis is a political history and a history of ideas. It is an account of social feminism in the early twentieth century as it sought to extend the ideal of equality to the family and social citizenshp to women in their family roles. Although first-wave feminism has been seen as predominantlv concerned with equality in public life. I argue that women's position in the farmly especially as mothers raised questions for the women's movement whch were addressed in a number of ways. At a time when state solutions to social problems seemed increasingly convincing this contributed to a shift in the relationshp between families and the state and suggests that organised women's advocacy may have played a greater part in creatlng a political consensus for state welfare provision than has been recognised. Ths forms the context for social-liberal feminism after 1918, exemplified by the Edinburgh Women Citizens' Association. The papers of the EWCA add a new dimension to knowledge of the women's movement in the inter-war period. They show an ambitious autonomous women's organisabon active at a time when feminism is believed to have been in almost terminal decline. They gave a strong sense of what citizenshp meant to newly enfranchsed women and the purposes to whch thev wished to put their new rights: their view of a distinctive women's citizenship drew on both a Victorian tradition of women's activism and on ideas wbch had been developed in pre-war socialist feminism. As a claim to influence in previously wholly male fora it was embedded within the discursive strengths and limitatlons of women's traditional arenas of power/knowledge, family and morality. My approach to these issues is through an analysis of primary texts including The Economic Foundations of the Women's Movement (1914) by Mabel Atkinson and Women: An Inquiry (1925) by Willa Muir, and secondary sources, mainly from recent feminist scholarship. My discussion of the interwar women's movement in Scotland is based on the papers of the EWCA (1918-1939). The thesis reflects on approaches to political theory and to history and argues that categorisations of the political and of feminism create problems of analysis. Ths calls for a theoretical framework whch situates political ideas and strategy within the disourses of gender of the time rather than in a privileged position outside and counter to it: I draw on aspects of cultural theory to develop this argument. A problematic relationshp between familv interests and women's equality runs through, and is made visible through women's movement history. This opposition is formed by the dichotomous positioning of private and public and of difference and equality and hence of the categories family and state. Atkinson's articulation of the demand bv women for love (sexual relationships and children) and work (economic and personal independence) names a refusal to resolve tlus opposition through a separation between those women who marry and have children and those who have public careers. Attempts to renegotiate the gender settlement as it affects private and family life have proved to be a great deal more difficult to carry through than is creatng a greater role for women in the public sphere, hard though that also may be. The repeated identfication of feminism with equality as access to public life is a consequence of the relative success of arguments from equality, but questions about how a 'male standard' creates difficulties for women in public life continue to be relevant. Redrawing the conceptual boundaries whch form ths tension calls for not a reassertion of difference or equality- but a parallel assertion of both: that equality is brought to the family and that at the same time the differences associated with family and caring roles are insistently brought into public life. In conclusion I comment on how the opposition between family responsibilities and gender equality has become one of the 'self-evidences' of our age and that it poses one of the most central questions for philosophy and politics: how to reconcile social and indvidual interests.

Although the eruption of religious dissent in Germany touched off by Martin Luther in 1517 began as a theological disagreement, the ensuring years would reveal that these religious ideas had important social consequences. They set into motion a process of reordering society and forming of confessional identities that had significant implications for the nuclear family. Reflecting John Calvin's assertion that "every individual Family ought to be a Little Church of Christ," Reformed Protestants sought to transform nuclear families into spiritual communities, creating domestic microcosms of the larger church. This project examines the religious formation of families among the French Reformed (Huguenot) Churches, demonstrating that this was a cultural offensive as much as it was a religious one. Huguenot leaders wanted far more than their congregants to attend church: this programme transformed the roles and responsibilities of family members, shaped the activities and routines of the household, circumscribed and defined the appropriate associations of family members, and reorganized the family schedule. This study illuminates the Huguenots' conception of a "holy household" by analyzing the four primary characteristics of these godly families - ordered, educational, pure, and pious - and describes how they were conceived of and implemented in Reformed communities across early modern France. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the French Reformed family, this dissertation bridges the divide between intellectual history and social history. There was no greater intellectual source for French Protestantism than John Calvin and Geneva: Calvin was one of the primary theologians influencing the development of Protestantism in France, and the Genevan Church served as an advisor and template for many of the Huguenot churches. Accordingly, each chapter examines in depth the theological underpinnings of this effort, analyzing Calvin's sermons, commentaries, Institutes of the Christian Religion, and written correspondence with leaders of the Huguenot churches. This investigation, in turn, provides an understanding of the religious sources for this new emphasis holy family and domestic piety in France, without which it would be impossible to fully appreciate. To balance these prescriptive sources, I analyze descriptive records to understand how the actual reform of the family was carried out on the local level. In particular, my research relies extensively on church discipline records (consistory registers) from churches throughout France: Albenc (1606-1682), Archiac (1600-1637), Blois (1574-1579), Coutras (1582-1584), Die (1639-1686), Le Mans (1560-1561), Mussidan (1593-1599), Nîmes (1561-1564), Pont-de-Camares (1574-1579), Rochechouart (1596-1635), and Saint-Gervais (1564-1568). These records reveal the complex and messy manner of this reform, which was often marked by contestation and negotiation. Throughout, I compare these records to Genevan discipline records to compare and contrast how Calvin's own church instituted this familial reform in the Genevan context. My project, in sum, reveals the heretofore overlooked religious role and significance of the family and home in Reformed churches of early modern France.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between marital history and individuals’ retirement resources, namely Social Security, employer-sponsored pensions, and non-housing wealth. Prior research provides a foundation for understanding marriage’s positive relationship to retirement security, and suggests that marriage is financially beneficial and can even lessen some external factors that would otherwise damage a family’s financial situation. Yet changing demographics, with fewer people in first marriages and rising numbers of individuals experiencing divorce and choosing to remain unmarried, suggest our understanding of this relationship for today’s retirees may be limited. The purpose of this research is to identify which aspects of complex marital histories are associated with individuals’ retirement security, paying particular attention to gender differences. Using data from nine waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1992-2008), four facets of marital history are examined: marriage type, frequency, timing, and duration. Currently married and currently unmarried respondents are separated during the analyses in order to adequately capture the association between previous marital events and retirement resources. The results indicate that marital history is associated with Social Security, employer-sponsored pensions, and non-housing wealth differently, and that these relationships vary by gender and current marital status. The findings provide support for the argument that marital history, and in particular marital duration, has a strong relationship to retirement resources. Contrary to expectations, currently married women with longer marriages have less Social Security and pension income than married women who experienced shorter marriages. Marital history has no relationship to the retirement security of married men. For the unmarried groups, never married men have the lowest odds of receiving an employer-sponsored pension and have less non-housing wealth than both divorce and widowed men. Unmarried women’s retirement security is associated with the type of disruption experienced; women with multiple past marriages have more resources if they are currently widowed but less if they are currently divorced. Further study is needed to understand how and why complex marital history factors have a relationship to retirement finances, and to expand our knowledge about certain understudied populations such as remarried women and never married men.

This study explores the links between women's work, gendered labour markets, and women's institutional political participation in 25 European countries. Although employment is a standard predictor of (women's) political participation, previous research has treated women's work mostly as a characteristic of individual women, disregarding the broader structural inequalities that are behind women's work patterns. Using data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey, in combination with detailed information on work-family policies and labour market structures of the countries included, this study aims to contribute to a more contextual understanding of the effects of employment. My research explores whether the effects of employment status, working hours, and job level are shaped by the context, in which they are embedded. Although labour markets and political systems vary considerably across countries and existing research has provided inconsistent findings, the context-dependency of employment effects has not yet been systematically assessed. Moreover, little research has focussed on direct effects of the labour market; therefore, this study explores the effects of two labour market characteristics that have a particularly gendered meaning: work-family policies and gendered structures in the labour market. The findings indicate that the effects of employment are more complex than often assumed in the literature. Employment can not only affect, for example, mothers and non-mothers differently, but there is also an indication that some employment effects are shaped by the labour market context. Contextual characteristics also affect women's political participation directly by redistributing resources and shaping women's experiences in the work-place. Overall, the findings show that the political effects of work should be understood within the wider context.

In this study, international recommendations for history education issued by UNESCO and the Council of Europe are compared with the construing of history in national guidelines, teachers’ perceptions and the results of students’ work in history in Sweden. The study shows how history education from the 1960s onwards could be critical and oriented towards minorities in a global world, clearly in line with the recommendations of UNESCO. International understanding, unity in diversity and safeguarding the local heritage in many ways became part of students’ historical consciousness.
History Beyond Borders; Historia utan gräns

In the first chapter of this thesis, we investigate the impact of human capital and wage structure on the gender pay in a panel of European countries using a newly available and appropriate database for cross-country comparisons and a comparable methodology for each country.

Our first question is :What role do certain individual characteristics and choices of working men and women play in shaping the cross-country differences in the gender pay gap? What is the exact size of the gender pay gap using the “more appropriate” database available for our purpose? Giving that there are mainly only two harmonized data-sets for comparing gender pay gap throughout Europe: the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES). Each database having its shortages: the main weakness of the ECHP is the lack of perfect reliability of the data in general and of wages in particular. However the main advantage of this database is the panel-data dimension and the information on both households and individuals. The data of the ESES is, on the contrary, of a very high standard but it only covers the private sector and has a cross-sectional dimension. Furthermore only few countries are currently available :Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Ireland and Italy.

We use the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES) to analyse international differences in gender pay gaps in the private sector based on a sample of five European economies: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Using different methods, we examine how wage structures, differences in the distribution of measured characteristics and occupational segregation contribute to and explain the pattern of international differences. Furthermore, we take account of the fact that indirect discrimination may influence female occupational distributions. We find these latter factors to have a significant impact on gender wage differentials. However, the magnitude of their effect varies across countries.

In the second chapter, we analyse the persistence of the gender pay differentials over time in Europe and better test the productivity hypothesis by taking into account unobserved heterogeneity.

Our second question is :What is the evolution of the pay differential between men and women over a period of time in Europe? And what is the impact of unobserved heterogeneity?

The researcher here provides evidence on the effects of unobserved individual heterogeneity on estimated gender pay differentials. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), we present a cross-country comparison of the evolution of unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gaps using both cross-section and panel-data estimation techniques. The analysed countries differ greatly with respect to labour market legislation, bargaining practices structure of earnings and female employment rates. On adjusting for unobserved heterogeneity, we find a narrowed male-female pay differential, as well as significantly different rates of return on individual characteristics. In particularly, the adjusted wage differential decreases by 7 per cent in Belgium, 14 per cent in Ireland, between 20-30 per cent Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain and of 41 per cent and 54 per cent in the UK and in Denmark respectively.

In the third chapter, we investigate causes of the gender pay gap beyond the gender differences in observed and unobserved productive characteristics or simply the sex. Explanations of the gender pay gap may be the penalty women face for having children. Obviously, the motherhood wage penalty is relevant to larger issues of gender inequality given that most women are mothers and that childrearing remains a women’s affair. Thus, any penalty associated with motherhood but not with fatherhood affects many women and as such contributes to gender inequalities as the gender pay gap. Furthermore, the motherhood wage effect may be different along the wage distribution as women with different earnings may not be equal in recognising opportunities to reconcile their mother’s and earner’s role. This brings us to our third question.

Our third question is :What is the wage effect for mothers of young children in the household? And does it vary along the wage distribution of women?

This chapter provides more insight into the effect of the presence of young children on women’s wages. We use individual data from the ECHP (1996-2001) and both a generalised linear model (GLM) and quantile regression (QR) techniques to estimate the wage penalty/bonus associated with the presence of children under the age of sixteen for mothers in ten EU Member States. We also correct for potential selection bias using the Heckman (1979) correction term in the GLM (at the mean) and a selectivity correction term in the quantile regressions. To distinguish between mothers according to their age at the time of their first birth, wage estimations are carried out, separately, for mothers who had their first child before the age of 25 (‘young mothers’) and mothers who had their first child after the age of 25 (‘old mothers’). Our results suggest that on average young mothers earn less than non-mothers while old mothers obtain a gross wage bonus in all countries. These wage differentials are mainly due to differences in human capital, occupational segregation and, to a lesser extent, sectoral segregation between mothers and non-mothers. This overall impact of labour market segregation, suggests a “crowding” explanation of the family pay gap – pay differential between mothers and non-mothers. Nevertheless, the fact that we still find significant family pay gaps in some countries after we control for all variables of our model suggests that we cannot reject the “taste-based” explanation of the family gap in these countries. Our analysis of the impact of family policies on the family pay gap across countries has shown that parental leave and childcare policies tend to decrease the pay differential between non-mothers and mothers. Cash and tax benefits, on the contrary, tend to widen this pay differential. Sample selection also affects the level of the mother pay gap at the mean and throughout the wage distribution in most countries. Furthermore, we find that in most countries inter-quantile differences in pay between mothers and non-mothers are mainly due to differences in human-capital. Differences in their occupational and sectoral segregation further shape these wage differentials along the wage distribution in the UK, Germany and Portugal in our sample of young mothers and in Spain in the sample of old mothers.

In the fourth chapter, we analyse the combined effect of motherhood and the family status on women’s wage.

Our fourth question is :Is there a lone motherhood pay gap in Europe? And does it vary along the wage distribution of mothers?

Substantial research has been devoted to the analysis of poverty and income gaps between households of different types. The effects of family status on wages have been studied to a lesser extent. In this chapter, we present a selectivity corrected quantile regression model for the lone motherhood pay gap – the differential in hourly wage between lone mothers and those with partners. We used harmonized data from the European Community Household Panel and present results for a panel of European countries. We found evidence of lone motherhood penalties and bonuses. In our analysis, most countries presented higher wage disparities at the top of the wage distribution rather than at the bottom or at the mean. Our results suggest that cross-country differences in the lone motherhood pay gap are mainly due to differences in observed and unobserved characteristics between partnered mothers and lone mothers, differences in sample selection and presence of young children in the household. We also investigated other explanations for these differences such as the availability and level of childcare arrangements, the provision of gender-balanced leave and the level of child benefits and tax incentives. As expected, we have found significant positive relationship between the pay gap between lone and partnered mothers and the childcare, take-up and cash and tax benefits policies. Therefore improving these family policies would reduce the raw pay gap observed.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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Lelov, an otherwise quiet village about fifty miles south of Cracow (Poland), is where Rebbe Dovid (David) Biederman founder of the Lelov ultra-orthodox (Chasidic) Jewish group, - is buried. His grave is now a focal point of the Chasidic pilgrimages. The pilgrims themselves are a Chasidic hodgepodge, dressed in fur-brimmed hats, dreadlocked, and they all come to Lelov for the same reasons: to pray, love, and eat with their brethren. The number of pilgrims has grown exponentially since the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989; today about three hundred ultra-orthodox Jews make a trek. Mass pilgrimage to kevorim (Chasidic graves), is quite a new phenomenon in Eastern Europe but it has already became part of Chasidic identity. This thesis focuses on the Chasidic pilgrimage which has always been a major part of the Jewish tradition. However, for the past fifty years, only a devoted few have been able to undertake trips back to Poland. With the collapse of Communism, when the sites in Eastern and Central Europe became more open and much more accessible, the ultra-orthodox Jews were among the first to create a ‘return movement’. Those who had been the last to leave Poland in search of asylum are now becoming the initiators of the re-discovery of Jewish symbols in this part of the world.

This study examined the relationship among sex role socialization, history of family violence, and being a victim of domestic violence. The unit of analysis consisted of 30 women that are victims of domestic violence from the Mount Ephraim Baptist Church Educational Program in Atlanta, Georgia. The study was based on the premises that: 1) there would be a significant relationship between history of family violence and being a victim of domestic violence; and 2) there would be a significant relationship between sex role socialization and being a victim of domestic violence. A face to face survey research design was used to collect the data. The sample was a convenient sample of women taking educational classes at Mount Ephraim Baptist Church. Results of the findings indicated that there was no significant relationship between sex role socialization and domestic violence as well as no significant relationship between history of family violence and domestic violence. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Despite the prevalence of neglect in the child welfare system, understanding of the etiology of neglect remains limited in scope. Limitations are driven by the frequent reliance on child protective services (CPS) data which consists of identified cases and consequently, the most serious of all cases, or through a few population based studies that operationalize neglect as a homogenous phenomenon rather than as distinct subtypes. Furthermore, most studies of neglect focus on maternal deficiencies while paternal factors are largely ignored. This study is meant to address these considerations by utilizing the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), a broad population based sample of US citizens, to explore the associations between mental health disorders and neglect subtypes. The aims were to investigate distinctions between maternal and paternal psychopathology and subtypes of neglect compared to other forms of maltreatment, key differences across lifetime DSM-IV disorders between neglect subtypes and other forms of maltreatment, and how the presence of maternal and paternal psychopathology and maltreatment subtype increase the likelihood of lifetime DSM-IV diagnoses. Out of all neglect subtypes, supervisory neglect was the most prevalent form of neglect and also had the strongest association to most lifetime DSM-IV disorders. Paternal emotional neglect was associated with lifetime mood and behavior disorders as well as phobias compared to those without this experience. Conversely, maternal emotional neglect did not have a significant relationship to any disorder. Similarly, lack of care (LOC) neglect did not increase the risk of any lifetime disorder and even reduced the likelihood of substance disorders compared to those without LOC history. Findings between paternal psychopathology and neglect subtypes indicate that assessments of neglect should expand to include paternal functioning and availability. Supervisory neglect, LOC neglect, and exposure to family violence all demonstrated a greater relationship with paternal substance disorders and/or antisocial behaviors than maternal depression and anxiety. However, therapeutic service delivery and research measures for both neglect and family violence are almost exclusively targeted toward the mother. Approaches that engage, assess, and intervene with both parental figures are critical to the welfare of children.

This is a sociological study of children's work in Indian families based on research carried out in Coventry (UK) and Lucknow (India). The data was gathered through unstructured and in-depth interviews of children from 10 Indian families in Coventry and 10 Indian families in Lucknow who run small-scale retailing businesses in each city. The research questions the assumptions of the existing literature on children's work in the family, where it is considered as a useful and beneficial task, and something that children ought to learn. Contrary to this understanding which marginalises the importance of children's work in the family, the evidence presented in this thesis demonstrates that children's work in the family is a specific part of their agency, which helps them to construct and reconstruct their own childhood and maintain their family's social order. It is the contention of the thesis that children's domestic activities are to be considered as meaningful 'work' that is not always oriented toward (future) goals of socialization, but rather toward the structuring of social relationships between children and adults. The data shows that although there is a slight difference in the expression of children's agency in Coventry and Lucknow due to different socio-cultural contexts, children's active involvement in housework and shop-work in both cities places them within the division of domestic labour. In particular, children's experiences in family businesses not only demonstrate them to be socially and economically useful members of their families, it also provides them with an opportunity to realise their potential.

The aim of the thesis is to understand why European countries show a very different picture of female employment (in their fertile ages) which is not the case for men of the same age. We shed light on the various positions of countries in this framework of earner-carer models, in analysing policy designs, policy outcomes and policy determinants. That is, respectively, family policy indicators, employment of mothers and childless women, gender role attitudes and their interacting effect with policies and employment outcomes. We have used a wide range of primary or secondary quantitative and qualitative data to carry out our comparative analysis, mixing approaches, techniques and methods, from micro-econometric models to macro-level harmonised indicators, supplemented with a case study.

The dissertation is divided in three parts, each focusing on one question:

(i)\
Doctorat en sciences de gestion
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In 2014 the Ebola virus entered Sierra Leone, soon to become the epicentre of a global health crisis. A state of emergency was declared, propped up by a large-scale and far-reaching humanitarian intervention; characterised by stringent bureaucratic and biomedical protocols, restrictions on social and economic life, and novel monetary flows. Based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, immediately before and during the state of emergency, the thesis presents an intimate account of the lives and social worlds of young men living in an urban neighbourhood. The thesis outlines the centrality of the domestic sphere – home, neighbourhood, and family – in young men’s projects of coming of age, as well as in surviving and brokering ‘crisis’ and foreign intervention. Rather than ‘crisis’ halting the processes of social reproduction, such processes became central means through which a conflict between ‘foreign’ and ‘local’ expectations – brought to the fore by external intervention – was reconciled and negotiated. The thesis demonstrates how a political economy of crisis maps onto core social tensions between independence and dependence that young men ambiguously negotiate around the home, and how resultant social practices and understandings connect to Freetown’s deeper and more recent histories of intervention, crisis, and entanglement with the Atlantic World.

This thesis describes the sixty years of transatlantic interaction, connection, dislocation and reconstruction in Anglo-Carolinian trade between 1730 and 1790. Focussing on about two dozen of London’s ‘Carolina traders’, it integrates their personal and collective stories of profit and loss, reputation and notoriety, and political activity and inactivity, with the broader forces they shaped and were in turn shaped by – forces of economic growth, political stability and instability, and imperial harmony and disharmony. Through their conjoined political and commercial agency – a dual role better appreciated by contemporaries than by historians – they profoundly influenced commerce between Britain and South Carolina. Their intermediation served firstly as a stabilising force in the Anglo-Carolinian polity as they procured favourable treatment for the colony’s goods and represented its grievances in the imperial metropolis. An important influence on this was their ‘absentee’ ownership of property in South Carolina and the thesis explores in depth the underappreciated prevalence and significance of this transatlantic absenteeism. From the mid-1760s, however, the traders’ political and commercial agency aggravated intra-imperial discord. Disputes between British merchants and their Carolinian correspondents reflected in microcosm the geo-political shifts of the time and reveal at an inter-personal level how resistance to British imperial authority developed among Carolinians. Furthermore, these disputes played a constitutive role in this resistance, as the purported commercial iniquities and political orientations of British merchants led their correspondents to question and reject the commercial and political norms that had once sustained Anglo-Carolinian relations. The thesis thus helps explain how South Carolina moved, often imperceptibly, against British authority during the 1760s and early 1770s by emphasising commercial discord within the growing political-economic friction. It further contributes to the burgeoning historiography of the eighteenth-century ‘Atlantic world’ by exploring the reconstruction of trading links between Britain and South Carolina after American independence. It reveals how strongly these were influenced by pre-war politics. In so doing, it demonstrates that Carolinians exercised greater commercial discretion after the war than contemporaries and historians have appreciated, and thus challenges contentions of South Carolina’s continuing commercial subservience to British trading interests.

The thesis focuses on the issue of the assessment of social work students in practice learning settings and draws on multi-disciplinary and international literature. The dissertation considers why practice assessors find it so difficult to fail social work students and what might get in the way of failing a student. The rationale for such an exploration concerns the relatively limited literature from both social work and other disciplines where there is a practice-learning element and what limited literature there is often appears under-theorised. A further rationale to explore this area of professional practice concerns the author‟s own experiences as a social work practitioner, practice assessor and social work educator. Located within a qualitative framework, the methodological influences on the research include: ethnography, life story and narrative approaches as well as practitioner-research paradigms; although it is clear that as the research progressed, practitioner-research paradigms became more influential. Based on twenty in-depth interviews with both new and experienced practice assessors, the research utilises the voice centred relational method to analyse the data. From this narrative process a number of stories emerge, including; “The Angry Story”, “The Dramatic Event Story”, “The Guilty Story”, “The Idealised Learner Story”, “The Internalising Failure So I Couldn‟t Always Failure Them Story”, “The Lack of Reflection Story” and the “What is my Role/Assessment Story”. Psychodynamic frameworks have been employed to theorise and make sense of these various stories as well as transactional analytical perspectives. Differences in approach to practice assessing are also considered, most notably around how practice assessors‟ conceptualise, make use of and understand the assessment process. It is also clear that disability, gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality also impact on the assessment process. For some practice assessors, ultimately the evidence of students' competence appears to rest on hope. It appears that some practice assessors are still giving students “the benefit of the doubt” a phrase coined thirty years ago by Brandon and Davies (1979) in a wide ranging but still very relevant study of the assessment of social work students in practice settings. Practice assessors thus find it difficult to fail students because of: Their lack of reflection about the intense emotions raised; The internalisation of these intense feelings; Lack of support from colleagues, the Higher Education Institute (HEI) and tutors; Lack of understanding about the process of assessment; Difficulties in managing the multifaceted role of the practice educator including the lack of acknowledgment of the gate keeping function.The dissertation concludes that although practice assessors have a very clear understanding of what behaviours might hypothetically cause a student to fail the practice learning opportunity, the reality is that not all practice assessors go on to fail the student. The high emotionality often associated with the process of managing a potentially failing student on placement often obscures the process. The thesis argues the need for practitioners to consider the intense feelings that arise in difficult practice learning opportunity situations in a more reflective, contained and considered manner. A number of ways forward have been suggested in light of these findings, including the need to pilot a reflective toolkit for practice assessors and students alike.

Introduction: Existing literature focuses on the risks that prostitutes pose to society rather than the occupational risks they face. Most of this work has been conducted with women who work on the streets, although estimates suggest that indoor prostitution (saunas and private flats) in particular is a growing area of commercial sex. This thesis aims to examine the social and economic organisation of commercial sex work in the UK across the three settings of street, sauna and private flats, paying particular attention to the health and safety implications for the women involved. Results: Women in the study reported high levels of social disadvantage that influenced their entry into prostitution; almost half were first paid for sex before they were eighteen and a minority were first forced into prostitution. The working conditions and routines of the three workplaces are described, focusing on the key social and structural features of the workplace, women’s autonomy and working rules, along with their potential impact upon general health, work related stress and safety. Few differences were found in the sexual and reproductive health of women working in different settings. However, as a group, prostitutes had far poorer sexual and reproductive health than non-prostitute women. High levels of violence were reported across the study, mainly from clients, but also pimps and other women. This was patterned by workplace, with street workers significantly more likely to experience violence than either sauna or flat workers. Conclusion: Prostitutes do not represent a threat to the health and safety of their clients; rather, data from this study suggest that the reverse is true. Prostitute health (e.g. sexual and reproductive health, drug use) is poorer than that of non-prostitute women in the UK, and as such, prostitutes represent a group with specialist health and welfare needs. The illegality, stigma and organisation of prostitution further impede women’s health and safety. The findings of this study can be used to tailor health services for prostitutes, as well as inform policy and future research

As life expectancy increases, grandparents spend a longer part of their life with grandchildren, which opens opportunities for sharing time, resources, and affection. The present dissertation aims at investigating the content of the grandparent-grandchild relationship and, at the same time, the consequences that becoming a grandmother could have on mid-life women’s labour market participation. It revolves around three main contributions. First, it approaches grandparenting from a stratification perspective, putting forward that grandparents could perform different activities with grandchildren according to their educational levels. Second, it investigates grandmothers’ transition to retirement as driven by the institutional context, which shapes both the extent to which grandparental childcare is needed as support for the younger generations (measured through the availability of childcare services) and the extent to which it is easy and attractive to withdraw early from the labour force for old-age individuals (measured through the generosity of the pension system). Finally, it considers grandmothers’ labour market withdrawal as enabled, or constrained, by women’s previous work history, with two case-studies: England and Italy. In fact, decisions taken earlier in life on work-family reconciliation, on the one hand, could be reproduced in late-life upon the grandchild’s birth; on the other hand, years worked, and kind of job held open different routes for retirement. Taken together, the present dissertation unveils that grandparenthood is a multifaceted phenomenon, which must be studied in a multi-generational framework and by considering demographic, social, and institutional trends of current European societies.

This thesis explores the complexities of parenting in post-apartheid South Africa. It investigates the normative expectations surrounding motherhood and fatherhood and how employed mothers, as those who bear the main responsibility for childcare, reconcile family and paid work. It is a qualitative study which draws on 43 interviews with women and men managers in a Government Department and a Parastatal. Thirty seven interviews were with managers (21 mothers and 16 fathers), 3 with gender experts in these organisations, and 3 with Human Resources personnel. It also draws on an analysis of domestic divisions of labour in 3 households and an exploration of national legislation and workplace policies to examine how the workplace accommodates those with family/childcare responsibilities. The study demonstrates that South African parenting is complex: parental norms encapsulate the coexistence of modern and traditional values (Inglehart and Baker, 2003; Hotchfeld, 2008), rather than following a linear pattern of change from traditional to modern. Moreover, there are inconsistencies in values and normative expectations relating to gender-role attitudes and parenting expectations, as well as between gender-role attitudes and parenting practices. Incongruencies and contradictions in relation to parenting are also found between and within domains: the fast-changing workplace brought about by the new democratic government‟s commitment to equality and the subsequent transformation of the public sector contrasts with the „stalled revolution‟ in parenting practices, especially in relation domestic divisions of labour, within the domestic sphere. Using Squires‟s (2005) typology of inclusion, reversal and displacement to analyze South African approaches to workplace gender transformation, the study establishes that South Africa has adopted policies based on inclusion and reversal and has left out displacement, thus increasing women‟s representation at the workplace without challenging the status quo. To this effect the workplace has remained masculineoriented; it is characterized by a long-working hours regime and minimal work-life balance policies. As a result mothers are facing difficulties in reconciling family and paid work. However, women mobilize support outside the workplace to cope with the demands of family and paid work. The study shows that the support networks mobilized by women are influenced by socio-economic and geographical mobility associated with the rise of the new black middle-class families brought about by the political change from apartheid to democracy. The migration of families from working to middle-class areas demonstrates the fluidity of mothering and coping strategies; while fathers remain free from childcare and family responsibilities.

Mestrado em Gestão de Recursos Humanos
O presente estudo baseou-se na recolha e análise de estudos empíricos, sobre as políticas e práticas organizacionais e do Estado que visam o Equilíbrio Trabalho-Vida, na Europa, nos últimos dez anos, tendo como grelha de análise os modelos de conciliação trabalho-família identificados na revisão de literatura. Países com modelos mais tradicionais (e.g. conservador e mediterrâneo) concentram-se em estudos mais macro existindo uma superioridade dos estudos a nível micro nos modelos liberais. Esta diferença está associada ao facto de, nos modelos mais tradicionais haver uma maior intervenção do Estado na definição das políticas e práticas a seguir sobre este tema, ao passo que nos modelos mais liberais são as organizações que assumem esse papel, dado reconhecerem a sua importância como fonte de vantagem competitiva e de retenção de colaboradores.
The present study has has its underling base the collection and analysis of empirical studies, about the organizational practices and State policies that aim at work-life balance in Europe in the last ten years. The model's analysis grid present in literature review was the source to the study. Countries with more traditional models (e.g. Conservative and Mediterranean) focuse in macro studies thereby existing more micro studies in liberal models. This difference is associated to the fact that the more traditional models have a bigger State intervention in policies and practices definition about these themes. While in more liberal models the organizations take over that same role, because it is recognized their importance as a source of competitive advantage and employee's retention.
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This thesis consists of four empirical studies on women and men in European labour markets. Study I examines effects of the sex of the immediate supervisor on the time men and women spend in initial on-the-job training (OJT) in Sweden. The results show that men receive longer initial OJT than women do, but men’s time in training is independent of the supervisor’s sex. For women in the private sector, the chances of receiving long initial OJT are higher if the immediate supervisor is a man. Study II analyses effects of labour market institutions on the quality of part-time work by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time jobs in Britain and Sweden. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantages when compared to female full-time workers. Study III examines associations between maternal employment policies and wage penalties for mothers by skill in 10 European countries. The results indicate that, net of variation in female labour force participation, extensive publicly funded childcare is associated with a modest decrease in the motherhood wage penalty, regardless of skill. By contrast, paid maternity leave is weakly associated with a larger motherhood wage gap in less skilled jobs only. Study IV examines the extent to which women’s opportunities to attain positions of high workplace authority are related to maternal employment policies, such as paid parental leave and part-time work. Based on data from 25 European countries, the results show that a high proportion of women working long part-time hours is associated with a wider gender gap in the attainment of high authority positions, to the disadvantage of women. However, paid parental leave appears to be unrelated to the gender authority gap.
At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: In press. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.

The thesis contributes to the explanation of two well-documented phenomena: the strong decline in fertility rates and the parallel increase in female labour market participation which occurred in the last decades in most OECD countries. The argument is studied by means of a European comparison and an in-depth analysis of the Italian case. An innovative aspect of the work is the combination of cultural and structural explanations. In fact, the main argument of the thesis is that cross-national differences and the puzzling Italian and Southern European pattern of low fertility and low female labour market participation should be understood as stemming from the interplay between different factors, related to a structural – Welfare Regimes and the Economic Theory of the Family – and a cultural theoretical framework – the Second Demographic Transition and the distinction between “strong” and “weak” family systems. In detail, the thesis shows empirically how both women’s opportunity-costs and households’ economic resources as well as family values and preferences are useful to understand fertility and female labour market participation behaviours. ILFI (Indagine Longitudinale sulle Famiglie Italiane, 1997-2005) data have been used to demonstrate how individual- and household-level mechanisms, connected with social stratification, underlying the transition to parenthood and female labour market participation around childbirths are coherent with the Italian familialistic institutional setting. Italy is an interesting case not least because of its strong regional heterogeneity, which concerns also the family formation process. Adopting an epidemiological approach, ILFI and IARD data on the condition of youth (2004) are exploited to show how the regional heterogeneity in family behaviours within Italy, such as the lower age at parenthood and the higher fertility rates in Southern regions in the selected cohorts, may be largely explained by differences in family values. This first hint suggesting the role of culture on demographic behaviours is developed further in a comparative setting using EVS (European Values Study, 1990-2008) data. The latter allowed to assess directly the importance of values and attitudes for women’s labour market participation and fertility decisions in 15 European countries. Finally, the comparison between the different paths followed by Italy and the Netherlands in the last thirty years is discussed as an example of how changes in the institutional settings in order to foster work-family reconciliation are deeply embedded within wider processes of social change. Based on the developed theoretical framework and the results of the mentioned empirical analyses, the author attempts to integrate different streams of the literature and presents an argumentation about the complex interplay between interests, ideas and institutions underlying fertility and female labour market participation trends and patterns.

This study investigates the joint impact of menstrual cycle and poor access to water on women’s education and labour market outcomes. The research context is chosen to be rural China. Two parallel hypotheses that are tested in this study are as follows: (1) Girls have less probability of school enrolment and shorter schooling duration due to the joint impact of poor access to water and menarche presumably because that poor access to water may raise time/health/psychic costs of school enrolment for girls post-menarche. (2) Women have less probability of participating in work for wages due to the joint impact of poor access to water and menstrual cycle presumably because that poor access to water may generate lower productivity and raise time/health/psychic costs of wage work participation for women pre-menopause. For testing, the researcher uses the data from rural villages in the China Health and Nutrition Survey. This study conducts two sets of empirical tests on each of the above hypotheses using regression models and propensity score matching estimators. It is found that the joint impact of poor access to water and menstrual cycle is indeed largely adverse on women’s education and wage work participation. When the impacts of other confounding factors such as poverty and backward geographical location are controlled for, access to poor water is found to decrease the probability of school enrolment of post-menarche girls by 20 – 25 percentage points, and the probability of wage work participation of women premenopause by about 10 percentage points. This study concludes that a major benefit of policies to improve water supplies may not be the obvious household or industrial benefit, but rather an unseen benefit, the improvement in the position of women

This thesis uses a case-study of the historical development of one Scottish voluntary social work agency - Family Care - as a vehicle for exploring the complex and changing nature of the social work task. I argue that social work is best understood as a discursive formation - that is, a collection of contradictory and competing discourses that come together to frame the task of social work, defining not just its capabilities but also its potential. I argue that there is no essential social work task, but that on the contrary, social work has always been subject to competing claims of definition and practice. It is only therefore by exploring the different discourses within social work that we can begin to understnad what social work is and might be today. Family Care, although today a relatively small and specialised voluntary social work agency, offers in its historical development over the last eighty years a useful cross-section of some of the concerns which have been central to the formation of the social work task. The discourses which form the basis of my investigation and analysis are as follows:- vigilance and social purity; Christian ethics and values; professionalism; the 'psy' discourse; feminism and familialism; welfare ideologies. I conclude that the very complexity and diversity which is endemic in social work is a cause for optimism. Accepting the limitations and responsibilities which are a necessary part of social work, we should strive to make the social work task as non-oppressive and as just aspossible.

This dissertation analyses the relationship between social work and social policy in Europe from a comparative historical perspective. Central to this analysis is the dynamic interplay of forces which led to the consolidation of the European nation state as a welfare state, including the current crisis of the welfare consensus. The role of social work emerges as central to the project of national cultural integration, a perspective which frequently gets overlooked from a purely national perspective. Social works enmeshment with this nation state project is revealed in the current transformation of the welfare states in the light of neo-liberal principles and in the context of globalization. This perspective underlines the need for the development of intercultural communicative competences and in particular a consistent anti-racist approach in social work. At the same time the particular position in relation to social policy requires the development of research methods specific to the discipline in the light of its hermeneutic tasks
Die Arbeit behandelt die Beziehung zwischen Sozialer Arbeit und Sozialpolitik in Europa aus vergleichender historischer Perspektive. Untersucht wird die Dynamik des Nationalstaats und seine Konsolidierung als Wohlfahrtsstaat bis zur gegenwärtigen Krise des Wohlfahrtskonsenses. Dabei gewinnt die Rolle der Sozialen Arbeit in der Aufgabe kultureller Integration besondere Bedeutung, da dies aus rein nationaler Sicht oft nicht zu erkennen ist. Ihre Verkoppelung mit dem Nationalstaat wird besonders deutlich in der gegenwärtigen Transformation durch neo-liberale Prinzipien im Kontext der Globalisierung. Hieraus ergeben sich neue Aufgaben für die Soziale Arbeit, insbesondere in Bezug auf die Entwicklung interkultureller kommunikativer Kompetenzen und eines konsistenten antirassistischen Ansatzes. Gleichzeitig erfordert die besondere sozialpolitische Position die Entwicklung disziplinspezifischer Forschungsansätze im Lichte der hermeneutischen Bedeutung der Sozialen Arbeit

This dissertation attempts to integrate the household and children more fluidly into measures of well-being in the past. In part one, I develop a Monte Carlo simulation to test some of the assumptions of Allen’s welfare ratio methodology. These included his assumptions that family size was constant over time, that there were no female-headed households and that women and children did not participate in the labour force. After all of the adjustments, it appears that Allen’s welfare ratios underestimate the welfare ratios of a demographically representative group of families, especially if women and children’s labour force participation is included. However, the predicted distributions also highlight the struggles of agricultural labourers, who are given separate consideration. Even the average agricultural labourers’ family with women and children working would have had to rely of self- provisioning, gleaning, poor relief or the extension of the working year to make ends meet at the poorest point in their family life cycle. Part two adjusts Floud et al.’s estimates of calorie availability in the English economy from 1700 to 1909 for the costs of digestion, pregnancy and lactation. Taken together, these three additional costs reduced the amount calories available by around 15 per cent in 1700 but only by 5 per cent in 1909 because of the changing composition of the English diet. Part three presents a new adaptive framework for studying changes in children’s growth patterns over time and a new methodology, longitudinal growth studies, for measuring gender disparities in health in the past. An adaptive framework for understanding growth provides a more parsimonious explanation for the vast catch-up growth achieved by slave children in the antebellum American South. The slave children were only able to achieve this catch-up growth because they were programmed for a tall height trajectory by relatively good conditions in utero. Finally, impoverished girls experienced greater catch-up growth than boys in two schools in late-nineteenth century Boston, USA and early-twentieth century London, suggesting that girls were deprived relative to boys before entering these institutions.

FundaÃÃo de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do CearÃ
A famÃlia era uma das principais prÃticas de sociabilidade engendradas pelos escravos do Cariri. AtravÃs de sua experiÃncia, os cativos formaram diversos arranjos familiares, que excediam a noÃÃo tradicionalmente ideal de matrimÃnio e nÃcleo familiar. Em meio a essa multiplicidade, constituiu-se uma famÃlia mista, na qual os laÃos de parentesco dos escravos ultrapassaram os limites de sua condiÃÃo social e alcanÃaram os livres e libertos que trabalhavam e conviviam a seu lado. O processo de combinaÃÃo entre condiÃÃes sociais diferentes desencadeou a mistura de distintos tons percebidos nas peles da populaÃÃo livre e cativa, tanto que, ao chegar na segunda metade do sÃculo XIX, a famÃlia escrava era mestiÃa, caracterizada pela enorme quantidade de Cabras, Caboclos, Negros e Mulatos.

This thesis analyzes the right to reconcile work and family responsibilities which is recognized as crucial in women&
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s participation in the labor market. When women can not fully enjoy their right to work due to the burden of unequal gender division of labor, they become more vulnerable to poverty and male violence which impede them from developing their basic human capabilities. States should acknowledge that this is a human rights problem which is deriving from women&
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s overburden as primary caregivers. In order to overcome this problem and transform the patriarchal structure of the market and the family
state intervention in the private sphere is required. Two alternative reconciliation models are examined. The first is the equality driven model that encompasses parental leave and childcare facilities, which necessitate positive intervention of the state and more likely to trigger structural change. The other is the flexibility or market driven model which is based on part-time work and homeworking strategies. They target women&
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s participation in the labor market without necessarily leading to any change in the gender divisionof labor. The effectiveness of these strategies is analyzed within a feminist jurisprudence method. While the focus is on the international framework, including the EU Member States, the specific case of Turkey is also considered. Given Turkey&
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s socio-economic particularities, childcare largely depends on kinship relations and social policies regulating women&
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s labor market participation are market driven. The data shows that women in Turkey do not equally enjoy their economic and social rights. Therefore, by examining the international framework for right to reconcile work and family responsibilities, it is hoped that a case can be made to call on Turkey to abide by its international obligations to grant this right.

The subject of this study was Swedish women's experiences of their everyday lives as lived between the demands of work and family. Twenty female civil servants were interviewed six times each over a three and a half year period when their work places underwent organizational changes. One purpose of the study was to investigate how women while managing everyday demands reproduce or transform the meanings of gender in their own lives. A second purpose was to discuss the impact of these processes on women's self-understandings and ways of relating to power and issues of gender equality, as well as the meanings of "femininity" in their lives. The repeated semi-structured interviews were analysed using two qualitative approaches: the first focused on the ways individual women understood and negotiated their everyday lives. It yielded four main areas of negotiation: the personal biography as a dynamic context in which a woman understands her experiences; the balancing between work and family generally managed by women; women's often somewhat ambiguous personal fit at work; and the striving for subject positions at work. In the second approach discourse analysis was used to study how gender is locally reproduced or transformed from personal experiences set in specific discursive contexts. Modes of understanding were in focus; i.e. the different ways women may integrate experiences as parts of their sense of self, depending mainly on social positionings. Important discursive themes were the women's self-presentations, their experiences of gender equality and power differentials, and their ways of relating to femininity. The dissertation also discusses the types of psychological theory best suited to the historically changeable contents of "femininity", in contrast to its more stable relational qualitites of subordination vs. superordination, and argues for theory situated in a feminist social constructionist framework.
digitalisering@umu

In this thesis I present new insights into aspects of Peter Guthrie Tait's life and work, derived principally from largely-unexplored primary source material: Tait's scrapbook, the Tait–Maxwell school-book and Tait's pocket notebook. By way of associated historical insights, I also come to discuss the innovative and far-reaching mathematics of the elusive Frenchman, C.-V. Mourey. P. G. Tait (1831–1901) F.R.S.E., Professor of Mathematics at the Queen's College, Belfast (1854–1860) and of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1860–1901), was one of the leading physicists and mathematicians in Europe in the nineteenth century. His expertise encompassed the breadth of physical science and mathematics. However, since the nineteenth century he has been unfortunately overlooked—overshadowed, perhaps, by the brilliance of his personal friends, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) and William Thomson (1824–1907), later Lord Kelvin. Here I present the results of extensive research into the Tait family history. I explore the spiritual aspect of Tait's life in connection with The Unseen Universe (1875) which Tait co-authored with Balfour Stewart (1828–1887). I also reveal Tait's surprising involvement in statistics and give an account of his introduction to complex numbers, as a schoolboy at the Edinburgh Academy. A highlight of the thesis is a re-evaluation of C.-V. Mourey's 1828 work, La Vraie Théorie des quantités négatives et des quantités prétendues imaginaires, which I consider from the perspective of algebraic reform. The thesis also contains: (i) a transcription of an unpublished paper by Hamilton on the fundamental theorem of algebra which was inspired by Mourey and (ii) new biographical information on Mourey.

Denna studie behandlar bondehushållets försörjningsmönster och dess utveckling sent 1800-tal. Undersökningen fokuserar på ett svenskt hushåll åren 1870-1900, enperiod då jordbruksekonomin integrerades i marknader och ledde till ökad specialisering, nya jordbruksvaror, ökad rationalisering i produktionen och Bruksdöd för gamla näringar. Hushållet, Tomtas gård i Folkärna socken uti södra Dalarna, utgör ett av de bondehushåll i Sverige som själv dokumenterade processen genom bondedagbokens dagliga och vardagliga notiser. Den ekonomiska vardagen i bondehushållet har studerats för att förstå vad förändringarna innebar för människorna som direkt deltog i-, och påverkades av, marknadsintegreringen. Detta har skett genom att studera bondehushållets medlemssammansättning och tidsdisposition för olika arbetsmoment utifrån antagandet att husbondens livscykel hade en avgörande inverkan på bondehushållets försörjningsmönster. Livscykel förstås här som den tid då gårdsansvar innehas av en husbonde fram till dess att en ny husbonde, son eller svärson, tar över gården. Under livscykelns gång förändras, utökas och minskas, produktionen i relation till husbondens egen fas i livet. I kombination med aggregerad data från myndigheter har bondedagboken använts för att ge en detaljerad källa av den ekonomiska vardagen vid bondehushållet. Studien visar att bondehushållet marknadsanpassade sin produktion och utnyttjade det växande näringslivet i socknen för fortsatt förädling av egna varor. Processen tog sig även uttryck i medlemssammansättningen då primärt pigor anställdes för boskapsskötseln, vilket traditionellt utfördes av kvinnor. Bondehushållets livscykel kan utifrån nuvarande studie inte sägas ha ändrat marknadsanpassningen. Samtidigt framgår att interna konflikter om gårdsansvar inverkade på försörjningsmöjligheterna. En utvecklad metod krävs för att värdera betydelsen av husbondens livscykel för bondehushållets försörjningsmönster, framförallt om en närmare förståelse av kvinnors arbete ska kunna uppnås.
This study is concerned with the farmer households pattern of sustenance and its development. The study focuses on one Swedish household between 1870-1900. The late 19th century was a period when agricultural economy became increasingly integrated in markets, leading to increased specialisation and rationalisation of production and subsequent outsourcing of production from previous centres of manufacture. The household members of Tomtas farm in Folkärna parish, within southern Dalarna, were among the households in Sweden that documented this process through the daily reports of a diary. The economic every-day of the household has been studied in order to understand what these changes meant for the people who directly participated in, and were affected by, the market integration of agriculture. This has been conducted by focusing on the household’s member composition and the work allocation of its members; the theoretical assumption being that the family-fathers life cycle imposed limits on a household’s pattern of sustenance. The life cycle is here understood as the period when a male figurehead held household responsibility until a son or son-in-law took over the role of family-father. During this period, the pattern of sustenance changed, increased and stagnated, in relation to the family-fathers phases in life. In combination with aggregated data from authorities the farmer diary of Tomtas farm has been used for detailed accounts on the economic every-day of the household. The study suggests that the farmer household adjusted its production and used the growing commercial life of the parish for further refinement of its own resources. This process was expressed in the one-sided recruitment of female peasants for animal products, which traditionally had been conducted by women. The households lifecycle has, based on this study, not explained the extent of market adjustment. Still, there are indicators that lifecycle related conflicts did influence the patterns of sustenance though its extent is hard to estimate. Methodological refinement is required to assess the importance of the family-father's lifecycle on the household's pattern of sustenance, particularly if a more detailed account is to be given on women’s work in late 19th century agriculture.

This study considers Thomas Hoccleve’s role, throughout his works, as a “religious” writer: as an individual who engages seriously with the dynamics of heresy and ecclesiastical reform, who contributes to traditions of vernacular devotional writing, and who raises the question of how Christianity manifests on personal as well as political levels – and in environments that are at once London-based, national, and international. The chapters focus, respectively, on the role of reading and moralization in the Series; the language of “vice and virtue” in the Epistle of Cupid; the moral version of Chaucer introduced in the Regiment of Princes; the construction of the Hoccleve persona in the Regiment; and the representation of the Eucharist throughout Hoccleve’s works. One main focus of the study is Hoccleve’s mediating influence in presenting a moral version of Chaucer in his Regiment. This study argues that Hoccleve’s Chaucer is not a pre-established artifact, but rather a Hocclevian invention, and it indicates the transnational literary, political, and religious contexts that align in Hoccleve’s presentation of his poetic predecessor. Rather than posit the Hoccleve-Chaucer relationship as one of Oedipal anxiety, as other critics have done, this study indicates the way in which Hoccleve’s Chaucer evolves in response to poetic anxiety not towards Chaucer himself, but rather towards an increasingly restrictive intellectual and ecclesiastical climate. This thesis contributes to the recently revitalized critical dialogue surrounding the role and function of fifteenth-century English literature, and the effect on poetry of heresy, the church’s response to heresy, and ecclesiastical reform both in England and in Europe. It also advances critical narratives regarding Hoccleve’s response to contemporary French poetry; the role of confession, sacramental discourse, and devotional images in Hoccleve’s work; and Hoccleve’s impact on literary tradition.