Transcript Slide 1

Between care needs and equal
opportunity goals, for women but also
children
Chiara Saraceno
Research professor
The issues at hand: not only societal and labour market needs but also individual
and family needs
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Equal opportunities between men and women
Granting adequate earnings to households
Protecting children from poverty
Equal opportunities for children
Investing in children as the societal future
(particularly for some country) sustaining fertility
Are these goals at odds between themselves and with the EU
employment policy goals? Not necessarily
– employment gives women more negotiating power within
the couple, as well as exit possibilities when the couple
does not work any longer. Thus, in principle, supports less
unbalanced relationships in the family.
– Mother’s employment is highly protective against child
poverty both in dual parent households and in lone parents’
households. This is very important, since poverty in
childhood has much more long term consequences than
poverty in adulthood
– In the developed countries, the link between fertility and
employment since the Eighties has become positive, rather
than negative, at the comparative, cross-country level
– Gornick (2004) found that in the group of OECD countries she studied
The lowest the share of a couple’s earnings commanded by the mother, the
more she and her children are vulnerable to the breaking up of the couple, and
the higher the risk that they become poor.
There is also a positive link – at the cross-country level - between the mothers’
share of earnings and fertility.
 The most generous a country’s policy package, the highest on average the
share of a couple’s earnings commanded by the mother
But what about the caring and relationships needs of children?
The different dimensions of the caring relationship
– There is the need to receive care (and to be embedded in
meaningful relationships)
– There is the need/the desire to give care and to develop
strong relationships
– There is the need not to be swamped by care obligations and
not to have to pay high long term costs for having chosen to
invest in care
Therefore:
Care giving and care receiving are an important part of human
relationships. Therefore they should be perceived as civil and
social rights. Time to care should be explicitly integrated in the
way we think individual life courses.
But caregiving should be allocated “by nature” neither to women
only nor to families only. Rather, it should be a shared
responsibility
Responsibility for child care and overall child well being is a highly
gendered subject, given the prevalent division of labour and
responsibilities. This in turn affect negatively women’s and children
life chances
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The presence, as well as the number and age of the youngest
child affect inversely men and women
Women therefore support the higher long term economic costs of
having children (marginality in the labour force, lower wages,
lower pension wealth)
This presents a (poverty) risk for children themselves , in case a
parental couple ends
It presents also the risk of depriving children of a caring
relationship with their father, and fathers of the possibility to fully
develop their caring abilities and their emotional life.
This is particularly visible when a marriage/partnership ends:
children risk to become extranged from their fathers and fathers
not always have the capacity to develop a relationship with their
children not mediated by the mother
Just a matter of choices and preferences? Research
indicates that
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Individual choice is circumscribed by prevailing national gender cultures
and expectations, labour market opportunities, quality and cost of the
caring options available.
– Individual choice is also constrained by work time organization,
organizational culture in the work place, which in turn is strongly related
to sector-specific cultures
– There is a significant variation in preferences and constraints available
to individuals according to their socioeconomic group, and the stage in
their individual life course.
This means that
a) governments (and the EU) should not impose or even encourage one
single model of behavior and of dealing with children’s caring needs, but
should acknowledge that there may be different preferences and also
different evaluation of what is best for oneself and one’s own children;
but
b) Governments should open up opportunities, lighten constrains, improve
trade-offs, in order to avoid that gender and social class inequalities
chrystallize
Countries address the issue of children’s care
needs in different ways.
The male breadwinner model is no longer prevalent in practice and policies, but
– There is a wide combination of leaves and services, of supported
familization (paid leaves) and de-familization (services). And in many
countries the great bulk of care is left to families with no support (a great
role of grandparents)
– In many countries, but not all, leaves have been opened up also to fathers,
sometime with a “take it or leave it” quota reserved specifically for them
– Rather than the dual earner model the one and a half one prevails in most
countries. Again, preferences or impossible choices? And what happens
when there is only one parent dealing with the needs of earning and caring?
Overall length of maternity+parental leave. And length of
compensation, irrespective of compensation level. EU
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182
169
156
143
130
weeks
117
104
91
78
65
52
39
26
13
0
CZ
SK
LT
PL
ES
EE
FR
DE
BG
HU
Maternity leave in weeks
AT
LV
RU
DK
SE
Net parental leave
IE
LU
IT
UK
SI
NO
RO
Total lengths of compensation
PT
NL
FI
BE
GR
CY
MT
GE
Child care coverage in EU (+ Russia)
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99
Belgium
57
93
Denmark
56
100
France
43
90
Sw eden
41
59
Slovenia
27
90
Norw ay
27
80
United Kingdom
26
100
Netherlands
24
79
Estonia
22
70
Finland
21
81
Russia
20
75
Portugal
19
60
Lithuania
18
70
Slovakia
18
89
Cyprus
18
75
Latvia
16
48
Ireland
15
80
Luxemburg
14
89
Germany
10
98
Spain
10
82
A ustria
9
85
Czech Republic
8
93
Italy
7
60
Greece
7
74
Bulgaria
7
86
Hungary
6
60
Poland
2
0
10
20
30
Coverage rate f or children under 3
40
50
60
70
80
90
Coverage rate f or children 3 to school age
100
Levels and patterns of public coverage of the caring needs of preschool age children (taking account of duration and level of
compensation of leaves and of coverage through services). (Keck and
Saraceno 2008)
100
2
90
27
80
44
70
43
27
26
24
22
21
20
19
18
18
18
16
15
14
10
10
9
10
8
7
7
6
14
4
41
29
36
57
29
60
45
46
58
66
% of time
47
40
+12
50
59
22
65
30
86
80
80
73
70
27
40
71
64
39
74
66
79
78
63
58
29
49
44
20
35
32
33
37
34
38
33
10
32
20
14
9
10
UK
NL
25
22
11
19
12
8
10
13
12
BG GR HU
PL
0
BE DK* FR
SE
NO
SI
EE
Effective leave
FI
RU PT
LT
CY
SK
LV
IE
LU
Neither paid leave nor services
DE
ES
IT
AT
Services
CZ
With respect to mothers’ and fathers’ behavior
research shows that
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The longest and the less compensated the leaves, the more they
are femininized and the more they produce polarized behaviors
among women mostly based on social class/education
The longest the leaves actually taken by one single parent – de
facto the mother - the more difficult is for her to re-enter the labour
market
It is not enough to allow fathers to take part of the parental leave. If
there is not a “take it or loose it” quota, they are not likely to take it
(also because their entitlement is weaker in the eyes of the
employers)
The possibility to take it part time encourages both leave sharing
among parents and labour market attachment
Cost of child care affects usage more among the low income
families than the higher income ones (thus subsidized care has an
important redistributive effect)
Quality of childcare, together with quantity, affects strongly
legitimization and acceptance
From the point of view of children’s well being: Research
data do not present a clear cut picture. Overall
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Importance of a stable and secure relational environment. Thus too short
leaves may be harmful, particularly if there are not good surrogates for an
individualized care (but one should also remember that also parental care
does not always provide the standards which are defined as adequate ).
UNICEF suggests one year leaves (paid at least 50%)
– Importance of the quality of non family care
– Importance of the hours of work and of the overall of mothers’ work
experience, in so far it affects the quality and quantity of time spent with the
child
– Importance of father’s presence and relationship with child
– Importance of early education for cognitive development and for reducing
inequalities among children due to inequalities in the family environment. This
is becoming increasingly crucial in countries affected by important migratory
processes (see also UNICEF 2008)
IMPORTANT:
Children needs for parental time do not stop at school age
Children do not need only the attention and company of their parents (de facto
their mother). Particularly in low fertility countries, services and schools are
also places of horizontal socialization.
In conclusion
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Issues of children’s needs - and generally care - go beyond the scope of
employment policies, but must be integrated into employment policies
One of the limits of the European employment strategy has been the
undervaluation of care both as a valued and valuable activity and as requiring
high attention for quality, organization, timing and so forth
Focus should be redirected to strengthening opportunities and options and to
avoiding impossible trade-offs and dead-end choices
Well paid leaves and adequate, good quality child care are part of the measures
necessary towards this end and should not be framed as alternatives.
Also family friendly working arrangements and equal opportunities in the labour
market are however important
Finally, focus should also be more strongly directed towards issues of equal
opportunities among children and of social justice with regard to children