Household Employment and the Crisis in Europe

Abstract

The 2008 crisis had a significant impact on household employment in some European countries. An analysis of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions generated a new cross-national typology of household employment structures and showed how these changed during the crisis and austerity period, capturing the experiences of high and low qualified households. Findings indicate that dual earning households are not always a consequence of gender equality but result from economic necessity or employment opportunities. The re-emergence of traditional male breadwinner households is often the result of female unemployment, especially for lower educated women. An increase in female single earners and workless households is evident in countries hit hardest by the employment crisis. The value of this cross-national typology, rooted in the interaction of educational effects and employment opportunities, is allowing comparison both within and between European countries, going beyond established typologies based on policy frameworks or gender cultures.

Work–family arrangements and the crisis in Spain: Balkanized gender contracts?

“…Comparative research on employment and the family has largely focused on typologies of policy regimes and the identification of dominant types of work–family arrangements (WFA), thereby underestimating within‐country diversity. A few studies have recently shown how these internal differences often reflect variation across socioeconomic groups (Dotti Sani, 2018; Hook, 2015; Sánchez‐Mira & O'Reilly, 2019). However, these studies have often either remained rather descriptive (Dotti Sani, 2018) or have discussed their findings under the frame of the welfare‐regime literature (Hook, 2015).…”

“…They have thus ignored theoretical discussions on labour market segmentation and institutional dualism that could help advance our understanding of how WFA polarize along social divisions (Dingeldey, 2017; Gottfried, 2013; O'Reilly & Nazio, 2014). Moreover, the mentioned studies have looked at differences by educational attainment (Dotti Sani, 2018; Hook, 2015), arguing that occupational classifications are more directly affected by the idiosyncratic construction of occupational status within countries (Sánchez‐Mira & O'Reilly, 2019). While this is certainly a useful strategy for cross‐national comparisons, using a measure of occupational structure allows for a closer analysis of the effects that segmented labour markets and the regulation of work have on the household organization of labour and how these are rooted in specific historical and societal characteristics.…”

“…At the household level, dual‐earner couples increased from 31 per cent of the population in 1992 to 43 per cent in 2000 and exceeded 57 per cent in 2007 (Franco & Winqvist, 2002; Sánchez‐Mira, 2016). The majority of Spanish households fall either into the categories of both full‐time (BFT) or MBW arrangements, reflecting a polarization along women's educational level (Dotti Sani, 2018; Hook, 2015; Sánchez‐Mira & O'Reilly, 2019). Spain is also one of the countries that suffered the most job losses due to the economic crisis and is a paradigmatic example of the dynamics of so‐called he‐cession and sh(e)‐austerity (Karamessini & Rubery, 2014; Périvier, 2018).…”

“…Spain is also one of the countries that suffered the most job losses due to the economic crisis and is a paradigmatic example of the dynamics of so‐called he‐cession and sh(e)‐austerity (Karamessini & Rubery, 2014; Périvier, 2018). Dual full‐time and MBW households decreased the most with the crisis, while there was a notable increase in female breadwinner (FBW) and workless (WKL) couples, the former being more widespread among the high educated and the latter among the low educated (Dotti Sani, 2018; Sánchez‐Mira & O'Reilly, 2019). This article systematically analyses these changing configurations of WFA by using information on the occupational group of each partner.…”

A General Model for the Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities Between Europe and Latin America

“…The theoretical contributions of feminist socioeconomics constitute a central reference for understanding and avoiding androcentric views. They will serve to explain the different career paths of men and women (Torns et al 2013;Muñiz-Terra 2020) or the different impact of the crisis according to gender (Rubery 2014;González Gago and Segales Kirzner 2014;Kushi and McManus 2018;Sánchez-Mira and O'Reilly 2018).…”