Proposition 2: It is too simple to only think of childcare leave as a mechanism of inclusion of women in the labour market, as it can also be a mechanism of exclusion.

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 11:00:22 +0000

It is too simple to only think of childcare leave as a mechanism of inclusion of women in the labour market, as it can also be a mechanism of exclusion.

With this proposition I respond to various studies addressing the question whether there is such a thing as too long childcare leave. Moreover, I address how it is possible that I found (in Chapter 2 of my dissertation) that leave increases mothers’ employment, whereas other authors (most prominently Pettit and Hook, in their Gendered Tradeoffs Book) found that leave reduces mothers’ employment. I not only hypothesize a curvilinear effect of leave with short periods of leave improving women’s employment and (overly) long periods of leave reducing women’s employment, but also suggest several methodological improvements.

I tested the hypotheses using the Comparative Motherhood-Employment Gap Trend File on 192,484 individual women, 305 country-years, and 18 countries, combined with country- level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database. The abstract reads:

In Chapter 2 we found that longer childcare leave facilitates women’s employment by reducing the size of the motherhood-employment gap. In this Chapter we follow up on this finding and test whether women’s employment is facilitated in societies with short-term childcare leave but negatively affected in societies with very long periods of child- care leave. We start by stating that this ‘long-leave question’ has not yet been satisfactorily answered. We argued that to correctly answer the long-leave question (1.) the relationship between duration of leave and employment of women should be explicitly hypothesised as being curvilinear and (2.) childcare leave should be expected to affect only mothers, not women without children. Based on this we formulated the long-leave hypothesis: In countries with short periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is smaller than in countries with no childcare leave, but in countries with long periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is larger than in countries with short periods of leave. In addition, we argued that to test the long-leave hypothesis one should use data in which countries are observed repeatedly over time, and one should evaluate for the presence of influential data. This can be done using the ‘Comparative Motherhood-Employment Gap Trend File’ on 192,484 individual women, 305 country-years, and 18 countries, combined with country-level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database (Gauthier & Bortnik, 2001). We found that in countries with short periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is smaller than in countries with no childcare leave, while in countries with long periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is bigger than in countries with short periods of leave.

The findings, thus, indeed show that long periods of leave exclude women from the labour market, but it was also shown that relatively short periods of childcare leave include women into the labour market. So, leave works as intended, but it can be overdone.

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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.

Prize Winning Research: Do children keep their mother from working?

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:15:17 +0000

“Do children keep their mother from working?” I used this title for a poster presented at a PhD conference, two years ago. The intentionally provocative title spurred some discussion about the world being a little more complex than it suggested. Of course it is, I know. But it got the attention of many: Just a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by someone who still remembered the title. She was interested in my research, which is about the extent to which family policies facilitate or impede the degree to which women can combine motherhood and employment.

In the end, I won the best poster prize. An updated of that poster (with a slightly modified title) is available here.

In the meantime, the research this poster was based on was published in the Journal of Marriage of Family, as:

Rense Nieuwenhuis, Ariana Need, & Henk van der Kolk (2012). Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment in 18 OECD Countries, 1975-1999 Journal of Marriage and Family, 74 (June), 614-630

Today, with this study, I was honored to receive the best research of 2012 award, given by the School of Management and Governance of the University of Twente. I’m very excited about the recognition our study receives, and the amount of attention it attracts.

So, please bear with me as I run you through some of our findings.

In our study we set out to describe the degree to which mothers in industrialized societies between 1975 to 1999 were less likely to be employed than women without children. We found that in no country mothers were more likely to be employed than women without children. Over time, women were increasingly likely to combine motherhood and employment in many, but not all, countries. Both mothers and women without children were more likely to be employed in societies with a large service sector and low unemployment. As you might expect, but has not been tested often, the employment of women without children was generally unaffected by family policies. Mothers were more likely to be employed in societies with extensive reconciliation policies and limited family allowances.

Interesting, right? If you want to know more (or don’t have access to the publication linked above), please don’t hesitate to contact me.

PS: this is the award!

Rense Nieuwenhuis » childcare leave

Proposition 2: It is too simple to only think of childcare leave as a mechanism of inclusion of women in the labour market, as it can also be a mechanism of exclusion.

Prize Winning Research: Do children keep their mother from working?