Balancing family and work in everyday life: a European comparison

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Balancing family and work in everyday lifea
European comparison

• Dr. Katja Branger
• Social Analysis Section
• Presentation at the
• UNECE Work Session on Gender Statistics
• Geneva, 6-8 October 2008

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Family and work balance as a gender topic

• Women, particularly mothers, are now more often
  economically active than in the past
• In families it is increasingly the case that both
  parents work
• The challenge of combining family and
  professional life concerns every economically
  active member of the family as well as the family
  as a whole
• gt What do the indicators of the UNECE Gender
  Database show us concerning family and work
  balance from a gender perspective and in
  international comparison?

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Indicators analysed in this paper

• Working patterns in couple households
• Time spent in paid and unpaid work
• Part-time employment of men and women

Other indicators to include in future work

• Employment rate by age of youngest child
• Employment rate by number of children under 16
• Employment rate by age and marital status
• One-parent families and children by sex of parent
• Unemployment by age
• Gender pay gap

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Countries included in the analysis are those with
2005-2006 data in UNECE Database for the three
indicators considered

• Belgium
• Germany
• Hungary
• Italy
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland

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Working patterns in couple households

• Solutions for balancing professional and family
  life are usually found in the division of labour
  between the two partners.
• Couples working patterns illustrate the division
  of labour.

Data show that traditional patterns with the man
working full-time are the most common in all
countries, occurring in at least 8 in 10 couple
households.
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Part-time work

• Part-time work offers the possibility to solve or
  mitigate the problem of balancing work and
  family.
• But it can also be a reflection of limited
  mothers participation in the labour force due to
  insufficient childcare services, as it is the
  case in Switzerland mothers who wish to be
  economically active often cannot find an adequate
  (and affordable) childcare solution.
• Part-time work not only has the positive aspect
  of enabling people to reconcile professional and
  private life. It can also mean job insecurity,
  poor social welfare provision (e.g. in old age)
  and sometimes fewer opportunities to pursue
  vocational training or build a career.

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Part-time employed persons in general and those
aged 25 to 49 living in couple households,
2005-2006 in Source UNECE Gender Statistics
Database
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Paid and unpaid work

• In all countries there is a clearly gendered role
  division looking after the home and the family
  is still the womans or mothers job, even in
  countries where women, especially mothers often
  have paid employment due to their increased
  participation in the labour force.
• In most countries studied, women shoulder a
  greater total workload of both paid and unpaid
  work, apart from Switzerland and Sweden, where
  the burden is shared equally between the sexes.

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Time spent in paid and unpaid work,
2000-2004 Hours per week, persons aged
15 Source UNECE Gender Statistics Database
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Summary

• In most countries a rather traditional division
  of labour is still very widespread men working
  full-time and women working part-time or
  economically inactive.
• Compared to fathers, mothers are faced with much
  higher demands when combining family and
  professional life since in most cases they are
  responsible for looking after the household.
• Part-time work represents a solution to the
  problem of balancing work and family, but it can
  also have negative consequences and be a
  reflection of insufficient childcare services.
• The working patterns of couple households change
  fundamentally as soon as children are present,
  depending of their age.

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Further work

• Completing analysis with indicators mentioned
  previously
• Including the evolution over time