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.

From the press release:

Good qualifications, a career with good prospects, a full-time job in a mainly male environment and irregular hours are all factors that cause women to postpone having their first child. These are some of the findings from research carried out by Katia Begall in four separate studies into the relationship between working conditions and fertility. She discovered that highly qualified women working in sectors that employ relatively few women are much more likely to postpone having their first child. Women working in sectors with a relatively large female workforce, such as healthcare and education, are less likely to postpone the birth of their first child. Begall has come up with two explanations: ‘Having children appears to be “catching” in sectors employing mainly women. What’s more, it is easier to have children in these sectors as employees often qualify for paid parental leave.’ The partner’s qualifications and type of work appear to have little impact on the timing of the first child. ‘The woman’s job is the deciding factor, although we did note a delay among highly qualified men, which we put down to the fact that many of them are in relationships with highly qualified women.’

The press release is to be found here, and the complete dissertation can be found online as well.

The abstract:

In this study we integrate demographic and institutional explanations of women’s employment, arguing that cross-national variation in women’s employment rates can be explained by a combination of institutional contexts facilitating the reconciliation of motherhood and employment, and demographic composition. For industrialized countries, we answer the questions (i.) to what degree motherhood and employment are reconciled, and how the interplay between demographic and institutional factors can explain both (ii.) variation in the degree to which motherhood and employment are combined, and (iii.) variation in women’s employment rates.

We pooled a large number of cross-sectional surveys, covering 14 OECD countries, over 180.000 observations, and 288 country-years. These data were enriched with measures of institutional context and analyzed using multilevel logistic regression.

Our findings indicate that motherhood and women’s employment are being combined more frequently in most, but not all countries. Even after controlling for the degree to which motherhood is combined with employment in a country, we find that women are more likely to be employed when single and higher educated, and living in a country with long periods of childcare leave, low family tax benefits, large service sector, and low unemployment. Motherhood and employment were reconciled to a greater extent in countries with long maternity leave, high female wages, low pay during leave, low family allowance, and low family tax benefits. Finally, we conclude that variation between countries in women’s employment rates are better explained by institutional context, whereas variation in employment within countries is best explained by demographic indicators.

The jury was pleased with a clear presentation of both the research question, and some selected findings. The poster presented some findings of a paper I’m currently working on, integrating institutional and demographic explanations of women’s employment. From the question-section of the poster:

Women?s employment rates have increased dramatically. Why?

• Institutional arrangements reduced role incompatibility between motherhood and employment.
• Demographic change towards lower fertility, lower marital rates, and higher education, made women?s employment more likely.

We answer three questions:

1. How did levels of role incompatibility vary over time in industrialized countries?
2. What explains levels of role incompatibility?
3. Did lower incompatibility of roles contribute to women’s employment?

Since this is very much work in progress, I will not (yet) disseminate any findings, but it is very nice to give a heads up on what I’m currently working on. Below a picture of the poster, but please note that the resolution is intentionally kept low, since this is work in progress.

What struck me in the interview, is the enormous amount of difficulties Rebecca Gomperts and Women on Waves have been confronted with. Whereas she had high hopes, ten years ago, for a whole fleet of ‘women on waves’ providing information and aid to women who required it, she recently has had to cancel some of their activities. This is the direct result of changes in Dutch abortion policy.

Partly, she is confronted with unjust allegations. For instance, she discusses the common misrepresentation of Women on Waves, especially reagrding what happens on their boat. The only types of abortion (if it can even be called that way) that are carried out there, are performed using abortion pills, and only in the first 16 days after a woman was expected to start menstruating. Moreover, their emphasis seems to be on providing information, rather than the actual abortion practice.

According to Gompert, the Dutch climate towards induced abortion is changing. Besides recent changes in the Dutch abortion policy, she also discusses how organisations against abortion receive more government funding than organisations in favour of the possibility for abortion. She concludes with being concerned that this financial inequality between organisations may topple public opinion against women’s opportunity to choose.

The first is a slight change in policy regarding the use of the ‘abortion pill’ in very early pregnancies (before 16 days after a women was expected to start menstruating). The government decided that regulation regarding this procedure now is part of the abortion legislation (which is wasn’t). Although the government states that this does not change much for abortion practice, opponents argue that this results in a more restrictive abortion legislation.

Secondly, health inspection ordered the prosecution of Women on Waves, a Dutch organisation that uses boats to provide abortions and information to women in countries where abortion is prohibited. By sailing to international waters, their actions are regulated by Dutch legislation, providing a legal basis. Apparently, they violated the law by using the wrong type of boat.

Interestingly, a major Dutch newspaper featured an interview with Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Waves, just this weekend. I’ve already rounded up some thoughts on this interview with the founder of Women on Waves, Rebecca Gomperts, which I will publish tomorrow. So, if you’re interested in this subject, do come back then!

New technology has that unique property of creating fascinating moral debates, which is especially so when it relates to new technology regarding life, death, or in this case: fertility. For a few years, technology has been available for the cryo-preservation of oocytes or ovarian tissue, which is used to help save the fertility of women who run the risk of losing it, for instance due to chemotherapy. Now, the question is raised whether such techniques should be made available to healthy women as well.

The main reason for allowing healthy women to have access to such (medical) procedures, is that an increasing number of women are confronted with the biological (/natural?) limits to their fertility associated with their increasing age, but did not yet find the partner to have children with. If such women preserve oocytes, these can be stored till the data she finds a partner, with which she can decide to have children, possibly with the aid of (already commonly used) IVF techniques. The most important reason to provide such techniques to women, I believe, is that the quality of the oocytes in a woman’s ovarians often deteriorates years before her physical ability to bear children.

The Amsterdam Academic Medical Centre recently issues a statement stating that soon they will indeed start offering these techniques to women in their thirties, who strongly want to have children, but did not yet find the partner to have children with. Of course, this raised a debate, which seems to be discussed from three perspectives: the medical perspective (technique is not yet sufficiently tested), the religious view (do not tamper with nature), and what could be referred to as an emancipatory view, arguing that it should be the women who decide.

All very interesting, but I found the discussion to be a bit shallow: know ones’ background, and their position (in favor, or against) is immediately clear. For those interested in a more thorough discussion of the ethical aspects, I point out that a very interesting article by Dondorp and De Wert was published in ‘Human Reproduction’ (2009). In contrast with the limited discussion in the popular media (often with said binary opinions), they are able to evaluate the issue on a multitude of aspects, including (but not limited to):

• Gender-equality in reproduction
• Biological boundaries and the limits of medicine
• The value of a child of one’s own
• Risk for mother and child of a late pregnancy
• The spectre of medicalization
• The principle of ‘primum non nocere’

Alse, these authors evaluate the alternative of proactive IVF, and contemplate on the ‘conditions for offering cryopreservation of ovarian tissue or oocytes’ to healthy women. A few of the interesting statements I found in the article include that men already can cryopreserve their sperm for years, the fact that it already is accepted for many reasons to have medical procedures carried out other than to save a person’s health, arguing the predominance of the actual situation in which women find themselves over the fear for medicalization, and considering the conditions for using these new techniques.

All in all, the authors come to a balanced conclusion:

We argue that there are no convincing a priori moral reasons why cryopreservation of ovarian tissue or oocytes should not also be available for healthy women. However, this is on the assumption of established techniques, also in terms of the efficient and safe use of any frozen reserve.”

On a final note: I’m very interested in this debate, and relating issues. I expect to be writing a lot more about these issues in the not-so-distant future. I would very much welcome some input from my readers. So, what do you think about issues regarding technology, morality, and fertility?

Dondorp, W., & De Wert, G. (2009). Fertility preservation for healthy women: ethical aspects Human Reproduction, 24 (8), 1779-1785 DOI: 10.1093/humrep/dep102