Tag Archives: gender

Education, News, Research

Women spend 50% less time in full-time employment because of family events

Women spend half as much time in full-time employment than men as a result of family events, finds new research by the University of Cologne.

The study, conducted by WiSo doctoral student Wiebke Schmitz, and Professors Laura Naegele, Frerich Frerichs and Lea Ellwardt, investigated the employment patterns of both men and women and how their family events affected this.

They found that family events had a greater impact on the employment status of women more so than men late into their working lives.

The study revealed that on average, women between the ages of 50 to 65 spent four years in full-time employment, whereas men spent eight years.

It also revealed that women spent an average of three years in domestic employment, and one year in part-time employment.

Early family events such as children and civil partnerships were associated with unpaid housework or part-time work for women, and negatively affected the likelihood of full-time employment later in life.

“The course of late working life differs drastically depending on gender. Men’s later working lives are mainly characterised by continuous full-time work and the same family events had no effect on their full-time employment,” says Professor Lea Ellwardt.

The results of this study are prominent in areas that are conservative, and believe in traditional gender roles, or areas that are characterised by a lack of public social infrastructure.

“Greater integration of women into the labour market is necessary to mitigate the shortage of skilled workers in the wake of demographic change. Policymakers need to introduce life-course and gender-orientated strategies to mitigate women’s disadvantage in late-life,” says Professor Lea Ellwardt.

The researchers add that implementation of new policy measures should aim to prevent social inequalities in the earlier stages of life, as employment decisions influenced by earlier family events and associated career decisions accumulate over the course of life, especially for mothers.

The study was published in the European Journal of Ageing and was awarded the Best Paper Award of Section III for Social and Behavioural Gerontology of the “Deutschen Gesellschaft für Gerontologie und Geriatrie” (DGGG).

News

International companies hire more women

Globalisation provides opportunities for gender equality in employment, according to new research by Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU).
The study, conducted by WU’s researchers Alyssa Schneebaum and Carolina Lennon, found that there is a correlation between global economic interaction and the gender distribution among a firm’s employees.

Firms that export or are owned by parent companies abroad have a higher female share of full-time, permanent employees than firms that are only active in their national markets.
This was especially apparent for exporters with customers in countries with equal gender norms – these companies employed six to seven percentage points more female employees.

“What we see here is a ‘race to the top,’ meaning that global firms adopt more equal hiring practices compared to non-global firms if they interact commercially with more gender-equal economies. There seems to be no evidence of a race to the bottom, that is, gender inequality isn’t imported through commercial links with gender-unequal countries,” says Professor Schneebaum.

However, the percentage of women only increases at the lower and middle levels of the organisation – exposure to gender equal norms has no effect on top management positions.
Being internationally oriented has a negative effect on the probability of a firm having a female in top management positions with exporters 3.9 per cent less likely to have a female in charge.

“These results are important because they show how commercial trade serves as a medium through which gender norms can be transmitted across countries. However, we do find that for more prestigious jobs, it will take more than just commercially-base exposure to norms of equality to get more women into management positions,” says Professor Schneebaum.

The study analysed data administered by the Enterprise Analysis Unit of the World Bank from 2006 to 2014, on 30,000 firms in more than 100 developing and emerging economies.