Women’s labour market transitions during COVID-19: division of gender roles and the gendered labour market in South Korea (2018–2020)

Better job prospects or an imperative to ‘just work’? A cross‐national study on social investment and women's employment

“…At the contextual level, it is worth considering that average unemployment levels at the macro level appear to influence the less educated the most and that the availability of public jobs might signify better opportunities for employment at the managerial level. Generally speaking, women's decision about whether to work depends on a number of factors such as the time available from their husbands and the availability of jobs, all factors that merit further attention (Mincer, 1962; Hong & Yang, 2022). Further alternative explanations for future studies should be based on the interplay of different social investment policies via interaction variables (for example, women might forego training opportunities in the absence of childcare services, which, in turn, might affect their employability).…”

“…Although social investment has a prominent activation function, which is meant to promote higher employment levels (Hemerijck, 2015), there is still no academic consensus on whether this approach differs from neoliberalism and its imperative to 'just work' (Jenson, 2011;Bengtsson et al, 2017). Previous studies have shown that, even when employed, women tend to be overrepresented in atypical employment (Schwander, 2020), especially part-time work (Saraceno, 2017); additionally, they are paid less on average (Mandel, 2018) and segregated in low-skilled service employment (Estevez-Abe, 2006;Mandel & Semyonov, 2006;Oesch, 2006;Smyth & Steinmetz, 2008;Hong & Yang, 2022). However, social investment policies should aim to both boost 1 This classification of social investment policies by function is admittedly a very rough one based on ongoing discussions in literature that, as already mentioned, are not decisive, yet we sought a conceptualisation that invites the least number of controversies (Bonoli, 2010;Morel et al, 2012;De Deken, 2013).…”