Throughout Europe, the family is still an important provider of care, but welfare state policies of individual countries may support and/or supplement the family in different ways, generating different\ud social and economic outcomes. This article compares and categorizes care strategies for children and elderly persons in different member states of the European Union, while also taking into account the\ud varied modalities for providing care, like leave arrangements, financial provisions, and social services. In EU countries, care regimes function as “social joins” ensuring complementarity between economic\ud and demographic institutions and processes. As these processes and institutions change, they provide impetus for care regimes to change as well. However, because ideas and ideals about care are at the\ud core of individual national identities, care regimes also act as independent incentive structures that impinge on patterns of women's labor market participation and fertility

Drawing on the business case for gender diversity, this article examines whether board gender diversity has a positive effect on firm performance, based on evidence from the Netherlands and Denmark. We use empirical data on 186 listed firms observed in 2007, of which 102 Dutch and 84 Danish. Of these firms, almost 40% have at least one woman in the boardroom. Within boards the average share of women is only 5.4%. In order to investigate the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance, two-stage least-squares estimation is applied, using Tobin's Q as a measure of performance. Our findings indicate that there is no effect of board gender diversity on firm performance. This implies that the business case for board gender diversity is not supported for this particular sample. Our finding seems in line with most European research.

In order to monitor progress with respect to gender equality in European Union member states, indices are extremely useful. Existing indices are, however, not appropriate because they do not focus exclusively on gender (in)equality and have not been created to be used at the European level. Therefore a European Union Gender Equality Index is presented in this article. Based on the universal caregiver model as outlined by Fraser (1997), the index is composed of four dimensions: equal sharing of paid work, money, decision-making power and time. With regard to the applied methodology, the index is constructed in such a way that the value indicates the actual distance from a situation of full equality. The empirical results show that full equality is still a long way off. Finland, Sweden and Denmark display the highest overall performance, whereas the southern countries — Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and Italy — perform rather poorly.

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In June 1996, the EU directive on parental leave came into force. A major consideration in the introduction of this directive was its advantages for the reconciliation of work and family life. However, there is little systematic knowledge about the practical significance of parental leave arrangements in the European Union for equal opportunities policy. Given this situation, the main focus of this article is on empirical issues such as the number of (male and female) leavetakers and the length of the leave. In order to present comparative data, a user rate is calculated for eight European countries. It appears that the majority of leavetakers are women; even in Nordic countries there are big differences between the user rates of men and women. As a result, the importance of the actual parental leave arrangements for equal opportunities seems rather dubious.

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Working time is an important ingredient in the Dutch 'polder model'. In particular, part-time employment has proven to be an important element on the road towards full employment. Part-time employment is also an important element in the so-called 'combination model', a model that has been adopted by the Dutch government as the main guideline for policies in the field of labour and care. The point of departure of the combination model is a balanced combination of paid and unpaid care, where unpaid care work is shared equally between men and women and both work part-time for pay. The article looks at the consequences of this part-time strategy from an equal opportunities perspective. It concludes that for women the popularity of part-time work has resulted in a destandardization and individualization of working hours. The combined effects of both gender and the specific working time policy has been to create a one-and-a-half earner society. Given the half income of women, the polder model has not as yet resulted in a remedy for the socioeconomic inequality between men and women.

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