In the spectrum of work family policies, the United States presents a puzzle. High rates of fertility, fairly high rates of paid employment, high shares of managerial jobs, no paid maternity leave, hardly any public investment in childcare, comparatively low rates of part-time employment, long working hours, and an absence of many of the protections that are taken for granted in European Union countries. While policies such as paid family leave poll well among both Democratic and Republican voters in the United States, it is over forty years since Congress came close to passing universal childcare, and over twenty years since Congress passed the last major improvement in benefits for working families, of unpaid job protected maternity leave.
Politics and Work Family Policies in the United States: Stalemate, Gender, Race and Class?
by Ariane Hegewisch | Study Director at the Institute for Women´s Policy Research (IWPR), Washington D.C.
Monday, November 17, 2014
3.00 to 5.00 pm | including reception and networkingDIW Berlin, Mohrenstraße 58, 10117 Berlin
Schumpeter Hall, First floor
Chair: PD Dr. Elke Holst | Research Director Gender Studies, DIW Berlin
Introduction: Prof. Anette Fasang | WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Humboldt-University Berlin
Abstract: In the spectrum of work family policies, the United States presents a puzzle. High rates of fertility, fairly high rates of paid employment, high shares of managerial jobs, no paid maternity leave, hardly any public investment in childcare, comparatively low rates of part-time employment, long working hours, and an absence of many of the protections that are taken for granted in European Union countries. While policies such as paid family leave poll well among both Democratic and Republican voters in the United States, it is over forty years since Congress came close to passing universal childcare, and over twenty years since Congress passed the last major improvement in benefits for working families, of unpaid job protected maternity leave. Drawing on a review of women’s labor market attainment in the United States over the last fifty years, Ariane Hegewisch will ask which factors may explain the underdevelopment of the work family infrastructure in the United States, and whether the current political climate presents any likelihood of change. She will discuss prospects for change against the background of current advocacy on women’s economic security and the U.S. midterm elections.
Ariane Hegewisch is a Visiting Scholar at the Project group Demography and Inequality at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. She has been a Study Director at IWPR since 2008. She is responsible for IWPR’s research on workplace discrimination and is a specialist in comparative human resource management, with a focus on policies and legislative approaches to facilitate greater work life reconciliation and gender equality, in the US and internationally. Prior to coming to the USA she taught comparative European human resource management at Cranfield School of Management in the UK where she was a founding researcher of the Cranet Survey of International HRM, the largest independent survey of human resource management policies and practices, covering 25 countries worldwide. She has published many papers and articles and co-edited several books, including ‘Women, work and inequality: The challenge of equal pay in a deregulated labour market”.
We hope that you will be able to join us, and look forward to your participation. Please feel free to forward the invitation to interested parties. To participate, we kindly ask you to register at events@diw.deby Novemver 12, 2014.
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privatdozentin (pd) dr. elke holst
diw research director gender studies, senior economist
department executive board
diw berlin, university of flensburg
mohrenstraße 58, d-10117 berlin
fon: +49 30 89789 281
fax: +49 30 89789-109
email: eholst@diw.de
Gender Studies DIW Berlin: http://www.diw.de/gender
You can access a selection of my papers at RePEc:
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pho166.html
