The long answer is the length of an academic paper, which I recently published together with Ariana Need and Henk van der Kolk . Of course, concerns have been raised for a longer time that long periods of (childcare) leave might be detrimental for women’s attachment to the labour force, and long leave has even been described as a ‘mechanism of exclusion’ of women from the labour market (Pettit and Hook, 2009).

Comparative research on the effects of long periods of leave, however, has been taking a variety of strategies – not all of them optimal. So, based on a literature overview and our own empirical research, we formulated four recommendations for studying the impact of long childcare leave on women’s employment:

• The relationship between duration of leave and employment of women is curvilinear: whereas long leave may reduce women’s employment, we should not overlook that short period can be beneficial (and vice versa).
• Childcare leave is expected to affect only mothers, not women without children.
• Testing the long-leave hypothesis requires the use of country-comparative data in which countries are observed repeatedly over time. Among other benefits, this reduces the sensitivity of the analyses to influential cases.
• The long-leave hypothesis is best tested against person-level data.

We conclude that our findings suggest that longer periods of leave can be detrimental to maternal employment. While short periods of leave can be useful, or even necessary, to maintain women’s attachment to the labour market after becoming a mother, very long interruptions of employment indeed seem to be a “mechanism of exclusion” (Pettit and Hook, 2009). There are, of course, alternative to long periods of leave, that include stimulating the availability of affordable and high-quality childcare, and stimulating the availability and uptake of paternity leave (Eydal et al., 2015)

References

Eydal, G.B., Gíslason, I., Rostgaard, T., Brandth, B., Duvander, A.-Z. and Johanna, L.-T. (2015), Trends in parental leave in the Nordic countries: has the forward march of gender equality halted?, Community, Work & Family, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 167-181, doi: 10.1080/13668803.2014.1002754.

Nieuwenhuis, R., Need, A., & Van Der Kolk, H. (2017). Is there such a thing as too long childcare leave? International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 37(1/2), 2–15. http://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-07-2015-0074

Pettit, B. and Hook, J.L. (2009), Gendered Tradeoffs. Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries, Russel Sage Foundation, New York, NY.

In this period, women’s share of household earnings grew, spouses’ earnings became more strongly and positively correlated in various countries, and inequality in women’s earnings was reduced. Inequality in household earnings increased due to the rising correlation between spouses’ earnings, but was reduced more by the decline of inequality in women’s earnings.

Had women’s earnings remained unchanged since the 1970s and 1980s, inequality in household earnings would have been higher around 2010 in all observed OECD countries. Household inequality was reduced least by trends in women’s earnings in countries with a long history of high female labor force participation, such as Finland (3% reduction) and Sweden (5%), and most in countries that observed a stronger increase in female labor-force participation in recent decades such as Spain (31%) and the Netherlands (41%).

As more countries are reaching a plateau in the growth of women’s employment and earnings, the potential for further stimulating women’s employment and earnings to counter both women’s and household inequality seems to be increasingly limited.

Nieuwenhuis, R., van der Kolk, H., & Need, A. (2017). Women’s earnings and household inequality in OECD countries, 1973–2013. Acta Sociologica, 60(1), 3–20. http://doi.org/10.1177/0001699316654528

If you happen to be in New York and are interested in attending this talk, please contact me. There might be some ‘tickets’ available.

From the announcement:

Women’s employment rates have risen markedly across OECD countries in recent decades, although evidence is mounting that this trend is stagnating. Rense Nieuwenhuis will discuss how these trends have affected earnings inequality within and among coupled households, as well as poverty rates. His research is based on LIS data to cover OECD countries for about 3 decades. In his talk, he will also relate his findings to current policy developments in Europe.

Rense is a sociologist interested in how the interplay between social policies and demographic trends gives rise to economic inequalities. His publications appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family and the European Sociological Review, among other journals. In 2014 he obtained a Phd (‘Cum Laude’) from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and currently he is an assistant professor at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI).

Light refreshments will be provided. After the talk, all are welcome to join us for a social gathering at Bryant Park. 

In my note, titled Association, Aggregation, and Paradoxes: On the Positive Correlation Between Fertility and Women’s Employment, I respond to a recent article by Brehm and Engelhardt. Their article revisits the cross-country correlation between total fertility rates (TFR) and female labour force participation rates (FLFP). The interesting thing about this correlation is that it turned from from negative to positive after 1985. My disagreement with their (otherwise excellent) article is that the pre-1985 negative correlation is taken as support for the hypothesis that for women having young children and being employed are (partially) incompatible, implying that the correlation turning positive contradicts that hypothesis regarding the later period.

My note provides three comments on why this cross-country correlation is not informative to critically test hypotheses on the degree to which women combine motherhood and employment:

1. The macro-level correlation across countries turned positive due to decreasing fertility in southern European countries, but this was hardly associated with more female labour force participation. This is not in line with the notion that within countries higher fertility was associated with more employment.
2. There is a whole literature on aggregation paradoxes, that dictate that correlations on different levels of aggregation can have opposite signs. So, a positive correlation at the aggregate country-level is not informative regarding a correlation at the individual level
3. In my own study in Journal of Marriage and Family I used individual-level data to find that mothers were still (substantially) less likely to be employed than women without children. Moreover, in various countries the individual-level association between motherhood and employment did not change at all in the period that the country-level correlation turned positive.

The original article by Brehm & Engelhardt and my response are available online from the Demographic Research website. Those who follow my research will recognise some arguments that were developed in my dissertation (Family Policy Outcomes).

On a final note, the editorial team of Demographic Research has been incredibly efficient in processing this note, and seem very committed to facilitate academic debate in their journal. The whole process (from submitting to publishing) took just a couple of days, and given that the original paper was published only a week ago, this makes for a timely discussion.

1. Motherhood is still associated with lower employment rates among women.
2. Family policies matter: paid leave facilitates the employment of mothers, but family allowances stimulate the traditional breadwinner model.
3. Work-Family reconciliation policies are most important to stimulate the employment of women with traditional gender role attitudes.
4. Women’s Employment matters: Their earnings reduce income inequality among coupled households
5. Women’s Employment matters: Their earnings reduce single mother poverty

I think not, but these arguments were actually made recently in the Dutch public debate on women’s employment (). Against this background, a website on Social Problems in the Netherlands, called socialevraagstukken.nl and initiated by a variety of established research organisations, invited me to write a piece based on my dissertation. The piece, which is in Dutch, was published today and can be found online. In line with the goals of the website, I tried to stick to the facts – hoping to counter some fact-free-opinions similar to those reproduced above.

The core of my argument is that there (still?) are systematic differences in how Dutch men and women respond to having their first child – with 37% of first time mothers deciding to stop being employment or reducing their hours, compared to 7% of young fathers.

In my dissertation I found that mothers were less likely to be employed than women without children, which I called the motherhood-employment gap. The size of this motherhood-employment gap was found to vary over time and across OECD countries. Institutional explanations of this empirical regularity were tested. In addition, it was examined how women’s earnings affected earnings inequality between households.

My dissertation led to the insights that reconciliation policies stimulate women’s employment by closing the motherhood-employment gap, increase women’s earnings, and reduce inequality among women and between households. Overly long childcare leave decreases women’s employment, and higher educated women benefit more than lower educated women from (paid) leave. Financial support policies to families with children increase the motherhood-employment gap, reduce women’s earnings, and increase inequality among women and between households.

I’m not convinced by the predictive power of dreams, but I did rise to the occasion during the public defense of my PhD dissertation on Friday January 10. I was feeling confident, and powerful in answering the opponents’ questions. Based on my dissertation and the defense, the committee awarded me with ‘cum laude’, a rare honor.

I am grateful for the support I received during my PhD. My supervisors Ariana Need and Henk van der Kolk gave my academic career the best possible start. My colleagues, both in my department and internationally, all learned me something valuable. My paranymphs Wouter Jans and Laurie Maldonado gave me moral support during my defense. To each and everyone: thank you!

The extraordinary lies within the curve of normality

This phrase has been the motto of my website for years, and still I have no complete understanding of its meaning. One interpretation is that being different is an inherent part of what we consider ‘normal’, meaning that if we observe differences this should not result in judgement. My second interpretation is that even within what we consider ‘normal’ there are many extraordinary, wonderful, and inspiring things to experience and learn.

For today, however, the meaning of this phrase is completely clear. Once you start your PhD, and as long as you keep on going, defending your differentiation is an event that is an inherently normal thing to do (if you make it to the end, that is), but (in the Netherlands) you do it only once and it is a very special event. It is the connection between this exceptional event and the many normal days working on a dissertation.

And while we’re at it, obtaining my PhD will be the culmination of four years of hard work, but also four years of many great experiences. Every day was special, one way or the other, which today will be underlined by my defense ceremony!

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.

The image with this post is a picture of the best research award I won last year at the Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies (IGS).

Currently, most PhD candidates (some candidates have foreign bursaries) are employed by the university. In return for their salary they provide some administrative services and / or do some teaching. The introduction of PhD candidates on bursaries would possibly reduce their income, but additionally they do not save for their pension, lack benefits when they’re ill and are not entitled to parental leave.

These plans do not comply with my understanding of the function of doing a PhD, as formulated in the acknowledgements of my own dissertation:

Doing a PhD represents several years of supervised training, developing oneself to become a researcher capable of independently contributing to, and participating in, a scientific discipline. Contributing to a scientific discipline means that a PhD candidate is supervised to create scientific products of the highest possible quality, and does so in an increasingly independent manner. Participating in a scientific discipline entails presenting these scientific products to others, frequently discussing these with colleagues, and collaborating with representatives of that discipline.

Dutch PhD candidates are highly regarded internationally. Hans Clevers, the current president of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, argued in an interview that PhDs from the Netherlands are well regarded internationally, because they are independent, creative and critical. That’s how we currently train PhDs: as young, independent professionals. Let’s not break that system by making students out of PhDs, or by overemphasizing on efficiency.

Dutch universities (used to) pay PhD candidates not to act like students.

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.

Critics of sociology stating that the discipline has no ‘excess empirical content’, ignore efforts of methodological rigor without which ‘anything goes’

It is sometimes said that sociology is particularly well fit to kick in open doors. It is a response to sociological research findings is that people think they already knew the outcome of this study. Sure, sometimes this may be the case, but most often one may have a suspicion about the outcomes – rather than actual knowledge.

In philosophical sense, this criticism boils down to arguin that most sociological theories have no excess content: they have nothing new to add to what we already knew. One argued that is often heard is that in sociology so many methods are used that one can always find a method – or alter one – to support one’s own ideas: sociology would lack methodological rigor.

The term ‘excess empirical content’ was coined by Imre Lakatos. In my dissertation I write about my philosophy of science:

Based on Lakatosian philisophy of science, the interaction between opportunities and interests means that we must reject explanations of women’s employment solely based on the concept of opportunities. Lakatos argued that: “For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific the- ory T is falsified if and only if another theory T’ has been proposed with the following characteristics: (1) T’ has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T; (2) T’ explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is included (within the limits of observational error) in the content of T’; and (3) some of the excess content of T’ is corroborated.” (Lakatos, 1978, p. also see: Levels & Nieuwenhuis, 2011).

Paul Feyerabend argued for methodological pluralism, stating that ‘anything goes’. This has been interpreted as indicating that any method should be endorsed, or tolerated. I do not think this is a correct interpretation. I interpret Feyerabend as suggesting that one should look at problems in different ways – and see whether news ideas reject old conceptions of truth. The methodological rigor is then found in the attempt to relate the findings based on different methodologies to each other – within a common theoretical framework.

In my dissertation I have closed three open doors, so to say, or rejected (at least) three theories:

• Pettit and Hook (2009) argued that (parental) leave is a mechanism of exclusion of women from the labor market. In my analyses I found that short-term leave includes women on the labor market, and only very long periods of leave exclude women from the labor market
• As argued in the quote above, I reject explanations of the outcomes of family policies solely based on opportunities, as it is the interaction of opportunities and women’s interest in employment that drive the outcomes of family policies.
• The incomplete revolution thesis by Esping-Andersen, who argued that increasing rates of women’s employment resulted in higher degrees of inequality between households. I could not confirm this claim, and rather argued that “The conditions for women’s earnings to increase inequality between households are hard to meet“.

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.