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

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!

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 books starts out by illustrating the power of numbers. Just by using very simple calculations, Cohen quickly arrives at the conclusion that the building of the ancient pyramids involved placing one giant block of stone in the structure, every two minutes. Since the weight of such stones is enormous, this required quite advanced techniques to achieve. Knowing the vast size of such an operation, this helps us to gain an understanding in how the Egyptians may have done it, and the level of technology available to them.

For long, people have been fascinated by numbers. Cohen’s description of the history of using numbers therefore starts with numerology. The reader is treated with lovely exercises is numerology: it is quite amazing how we can prove about anything, simply by reordering numbers that somehow correspond to letters. If only there was an empirical basis for such magic.

Off to more serious applications of numbers (by today’s standards), Cohen locates the proper start of using numbers in Hutcheson’s Moral Arithmetic. Hutcheson used formulae (and which are based on numbers) to make his claims about morality. Here, numbers were only used to illustrate a claim, but not much later people started to relate such numbers to observable phenomena. An example of this Benjamin Franklin, who used his mathematical genius to find arguments based on numbers for his political claims regarding the safety of inoculation against smallpox. He used numbers to show it was safe to have your children inoculated.

Many more examples are given of how claims were backed up with (increasingly advanced) numbers, and calculations based on these numbers. For instance, Alexandre Louis’s statistics showed the ineffectiveness of blood-letting in treating patients. Laplace used probability theory to suggest improvements to both the British and the French judicial system. Guerry was struck by the regularities he found in his tables on crime. Quetelet, referred to as the ‘powerhouse of the statistical movement’, introduced the ‘average man’. He explicitly started using statistics to gain an understanding of society. Quetelet is seen as the founder of statistically based sociology.

What did I learn

I think that the central claim of the book is that statistics became interesting when society became more complex. Especially in warfare, knowing how many troops one has, and can expect in the coming years, provides key insights in military strength. Unsurprisingly, the results of early censuses were highly confidential, not to give the opponents the benefit of the information. From a sociological perspective, this insight allows the rise of the use of statistics to be understood from an evolutionary perspective: the fundaments of societies change, and so does the way people think, as a result of that.

Florence Nightingale: the lady with the numbers

I was especially intrigued by Cohen spending a complete chapter on Florence Nightingale. As early readers of this blog may know, I used to be in the nursing profession myself, and was inspired by how she and her ideas was a strong force behind the movement towards a professional nursing practice. Of course, Nightingale has saved many lives during the Crimean Wars, ‘simply’ by improving sanitary and hygienic conditions in the war hospitals. Later, she improved these conditions in other hospitals, saving many more.

What I didn’t knwo about Nightingale, is that she greatly admired Quetelet. Cohen acclaims her not by inventing new statistics, but by using them appropriately in a time when such use was not common at all. By recording causes of death, Nightingale found that many soldiers died from infections, rather than war wounds. Also, using these records, she was able to show the results of the sanitary and hygienic changes she made. In that, she was a very early proponent of evidence based medicine.

Conclusion: Abrupt Ending

Unfortunately, the book seems to come to an abrupt ending after Florence Nightingale’s interest in statistics is described. As a result of this, only the distant history of statistics is dealt with in this book, whereas the introduction seems to hint at more recent developments in the use of numbers as well. Since the book was published after his death in 2003, I suspect that Cohen has been unable to finish his work. Despite this abrupt ending, however, I think the book is a very nice introduction to the history of using numbers, and provides an insightful overview of many of those in history who have contributed to the modern applications of statistics.

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This post is part of my ‘Reading List’. In this series I jot down some thoughts about the books I read and enjoyed. Some posts my give a somewhat balanced overview of a book, others will just focus on some aspects that, for whatever reason, caught my attention. Never are these posts meant as an evaluation or even review of the book. I just like to share some impressions.

An overview of my Reading List is available, which contains both a list of the books that I wrote about, and another list of books I’m planning to read.

So, below some thougths on what I learned about sociology:

[My] thesis completes my research master Social and Cultural Sciences, which I started upon my obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in sociology. In many ways, this thesis forms an accumulation of the lessons I learned. Three of those important lessons regard a trinity of a perspective on science, of how to theorize, and of method.

During my education, I developed a perspective on science, influenced by both Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Within the rules set by a specific paradigm, I attempt to elaborate upon the core idea(s) of such paradigm by asking new questions that build on existing ones, by using theories to formulate prelimirary answers to these questions, and finally by testing these new answers against empirical evidence with as much rigor as possible.

Regarding the formulation of explanations derived from theory, I was inspired by the principle of methodological individualism. Based on this principle, I learned the importance of analyzing social phenomena that are observable at the macro level by formulating explanations at the level of the individual.

Finally, regarding the method of research, I was taught both survey methodology and a variety of statistical tools that together can provide the rigor required to test the preliminary answers that were derived from theory.

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

A vast number of carnivals already exist. Fascinating ones and content are found on The Giant’s Shoulders, on classic science papers, Carnival of the Mathematics (although I understand nearly half of it), Four Stone Hearth on anthropology in the widest (American) sense of that word, Cabinet of Curiosities, and The Skeptics Circle.
A longer list is found on Coturnix’s blog.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find a blogging carnival on sociology or social sciences in general. Therefor, I now introduce the Curving Normality Blogging Carnival on Quantitative Social Sciences. It aims at showing of the quality that can be achieved by properly applying quantitative methods, and what these have to offer to the social sciences as sociology, communications sciences, anthropology, economy, development studies, and all that I forget.

For the time being, this website will be the host, and new editions will appear every 1th of the month, with a deadline three days before that. You can write something new, but I’m sure you’ll have some interesting posts lying around just waiting for a larger audience. You can e-mail me, or use the comments below.

So, please send me your links to your posts on quantitative social sciences and find them aggregated in one of the upcoming editions of the Curving Normality Quantitative Social Science Carnival.

The tuesday edition of the NRC-Handelsblad, my favorite newspaper, has a science page. So, it wasn’t difficult at all to find articles relating to the three main questions of sociology. But then again, it hasn’t been that difficult the last few days as well. Any suggestions for a more difficult source of news from one of my readers?

Today’s Source: NRC Handelsblad

Rationalization: Do safer cars alter our behavior? ((De automobiel rijdt straks op eigen houtje, NRC Handelsblad, 10-06-08, p. 8))

Today on the science-page of my newspaper an article on automobiles who start to think for themselves. Using lasers and cameras they are able to detect, and save, pedestrians. Isn’t that lovely, isn’t that safe. Of course they are, but wouldn’t they benefit only hold with unaltered human behavior? It reminded me of an investigation (I think it was in London) which showed that drivers of bigger cars drive more recklessly. So, the perception of safety of the driver might indirectly endanger the fragile people on the curbstones.
Just another example of how modernity might change our thinking, and how simple interventions might lead to unexpected results.

Inequality which imposes inequality ((Senioren en scholieren de dupe van staking, NRC Handelsblad, 10-06-2008, p. 3))

For ten days, Dutch bus drivers have been on a strike. Despite legitimate reasons (being the victims of liberalization of transportation market), by court rule bus drivers are no longer allowed to continue their strike. The newspaper today pays attention to those who suffered most by the strike: the youth and the elderly. Clearly, this is because these people have the least resources available to compensate for the loss of public transportation. It would be interesting to investigate in a detailed manner how one inequality results in an unequal position for other people.

Cohesion: Imposing social pressure? ((Gewelddadig gedrag is te voorspellen, NRC Handelsblad, 10-06-08, p. 8))

Criminal behavior can be predicted. That is the central statement made by Henny Lodewijks, a psychologist, who investigated a method of assessing the risk of criminal behavior of youth delinquents. He compared a standardized method to experts’ opinions. Presently, this is used to receive an indication of whether or not a detained youth can be released, or not. To me, this seems to be a noble cause. However, it reminds me of a discussion we had during a course on individuality (In Dutch) I co-initiated: how far can society go to impose norms on people. To what extent can we decide that a youth is ready or not ready to return to society?

Today’s Source: NRC Handelsblad

Rationalization: Gene-technology and mode of thought ((Gentech moet van slecht imago af, NRC-Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p. 6))

While the debate on the selection of embryo’s (see yesterday’s Sociology Today) is still roaring in the Netherlands, Piet Schenkelaars argues that gene technology should be relieved from its bad image. This closely connects to the question how technology and our means of food production connects to the way people think. According to Gerhard Lenski, with his ecological-evolutionairy theory, mode of food-production in societies has developed, strongly influencing the structure of society (division of labour) and mode of thought (more activistic attitude). Perhaps the possibilities delivered by gen-tech and the promise to increase food production even further will have strong influences on human thought and morality indeed.

Inequality: Migrant educational equality ((Toename afhakers in eerste jaar van HBO, NRC Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p.3))

There is always a lot of news on inequality. What to choose? Today I did not select the poor position of rejected refugees in South Africa, but a more positive development regarding inequality. Absolutely one of the more important issues in the newspaper today. But no, for today a somewhat more optimistic issue.

In a short article on the increasing number of students not completing their higher education, it is also mentioned that the number of migrants finishing a higher education is relatively increasing. So, their unequal education position is starting to become more even.

Cohesion: Troubles with the Antilles people? ((Toename overlast Antilliaan in R’dam, NRC Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p. 3))

According to the newspaper article, people living in the Dutch city Rotterdam have had more nuisances and problems with immigrants from the Antilles. Clearly, this connects to the main sociological question of who has contact with whom, and, more directly, who has conflicts with whom. It could however have been categorized under ‘inequality’ just as well, for to a large extent different patterns of criminal behavior can be attributed to differences in social economic position.

The reason that I mention it, is that I think that the headline on the article is misleading: it sounds like that these people have started to misbehave more seriously. But, according to the police, it is due to their changed policy: the police started using a zero tolerance policy. Thereby, the conclusion should be that we’re only talking about a methodological issue, not a substantive one.