Retrospective explanation of older women's lifetime work involvement: Individual paths around social norms

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Abstract

This paper uses the retrospective questionnaire of the SHARE survey of Europeans aged 50+ to document the career dilemmas faced by women in Europe over the last fifty years. It charts how social transformation was directly experienced by survey respondents: First, it documents career differences of two cohorts in four geographical regions. Second, it compares outcomes faced by career women who had ‘gone against the flow’ in countries where they were in a minority, with women who had taken the same decision where career was, already, a majority choice. Third, it examines how far individual career choice was affected by the operation of the welfare state. To do that, we employ a multivariate econometric model that treats entry into the labour market and career choice as linked decisions, which are affected by individual circumstances, macroeconomic conditions but also by social policy parameters. We conclude that the same degree of past social policy effort appears to operate differently in different places. This is broadly consistent with the existence of distinct kinds of welfare state in the different parts of Europe.

Introduction

The second half of the twentieth century was a time of rapid social transformation. Nowhere were the changes more radical than in women's participation in society and work. Women increasingly claimed a fuller and more active position in all societal functions. Though all parts of Europe and all social strata were affected, this process was unevenly distributed over time and space and was driven by a variety of influences. Such influences could have been structural changes in production, transformations in the function of the family, values and attitudes in what woman's position ought to be. This period of rapid change corresponds to the lifetime of individuals in the SHARE survey. When today's (50 plus) female population were young girls, the world they were entering was very different from today. These long term social changes correspond to lived experience of women in the SHARE sample. The women in SHARE were witnesses to the foundation, flowering and retrenchment of the Welfare State. According to a hopeful reading of history this period may start with ‘Three (or more, but separate) Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’ and corresponds to the construction of the ‘European Social Model’. Social policy stances towards maternity and family policy as well as labour market institutions were defining fissures between certain forms of the so-called ‘European Social Model’. This paper is a first attempt to explore how these factors – labour and social policy transformation – are imprinted in the lives of women in the SHARELIFE sample as reflected in micro-data.1 The data covers the five most important domains of the life course: children, partners, housing, employment and health in a way that is comparable across Europe (Börsch-Supan & Schröder, 2011). Thus the way is opened to approach a number of research questions possibly for the first time.

This paper utilizes the device of examining groups whose characteristics place them in a minority in their own country (women going against the flow), yet who are very similar to majorities in other countries in the SHARE sample. Thus family-centred women who have never worked are the exception in Scandinavia, yet are strongly represented in the South. Conversely career women in the South are uncommon, yet are the majority in the North.

These types of comparisons are useful for fixing ideas and for representational purposes. They can also be used to pose complex questions with clarity (approximating in logic to a controlled experiment): given that the kind of obstacles to employment which are held responsible for low labour participation in the South (child care facilities, income support) were patently available in the North, yet the minority chose traditional roles, what were the factors still placing obstacles to their participation?

The questions that this comparison motivates are wider: was it limited availability of service infrastructure (e.g. due to location), a question of values, a reflection of ill health or can we discern vestiges of sex discrimination and insufficiency of financial incentives? Conversely, given that the shortcomings of social services are deemed sufficient to explain persistence of traditional roles for the majority in the South, how did career women cope with the pressures of balancing work and family? Did they have fewer children, did they have access to child care from family resources, or were they forced to work by financial pressure? How did women's own (socially conditioned) preferences affect their choices? What are the outcomes of similar choices in contexts characterised by different social norms? Once we try to control for other factors, did social policy lead or follow developments?

In order to be able to disentangle this many separate effects, it is important to employ a carefully structured multivariate model. The last section of the paper approaches these questions by embedding them in a model explaining labour force entry and length of career as linked decisions. This enables us to examine whether social policy parameters had added effects having allowed for the influence of individual characteristics.

Section snippets

Identifying the groups: dominant and atypical patterns

Patterns of female paid work vary hugely in Europe, as do work-care models. Evolving ‘models of family’ (i.e. the shift away from the male breadwinner model in the direction of dual-earner families – Lewis, 2001) and ‘preferences’ (home-, work-centred or adaptive – Hakim, 2000, Hakim, 2004, chap. 1) have been ways of analysing complex trends. At the same time, economists have noticed the existence of two ideal-types which may be rationalized as the result of two equilibria in Europe regarding

Career interruptions of women with some work experience and children

The crucial factor in women's working lives is childbearing. Here we focus only on mothers who had been working when they gave birth, i.e. on that 63.3% of women in our sample who have some work experience. We first show whether the arrival of a child affects working patterns (Table 1). The table is derived by analyzing the question on interruptions, which was put to the respondents for each childbirth separately and is thus reliant on the understanding of the respondent herself. Looking

Comparing groups of women diverging from their country's norm

Having established a number of different work-family patterns as well as their prevalence in different countries and regions, we now examine women following a-typical work-family patterns (i.e. exceptions to what was considered ‘normal’ at the time in their country).7 A group of ‘pioneers’ opted for a full career in environments where that

Explaining the patterns: Does social policy and employment protection matter?

The ‘naked eye’ analysis so far has uncovered sea-changes in the patterns of female employment that have taken place in Europe over the life-span of the SHARE sample. To start uncovering relationships and the role of the policies, a carefully structured multidimensional analysis must be the next step. A model must be chosen that can explain individual career choice as a function of individual circumstances, macroeconomic conditions and social policy parameters at the time of choice. The latter

Conclusions

The 50 years encompassed in the lives of women in the SHARELIFE sample capture the periods of development, apogee and consolidation of distinct ‘worlds of welfare capitalism’ into what many call the ‘European Social Model’. In this paper we have attempted to chart how this social transformation was directly experienced by survey respondents of a rich sample survey. Our analysis, despite using methodologies not usually employed by analysts of social administration, has shone some light on this

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