'Women-Friendly' State Interventions and Occupational Gender Segregation: Paradise or Paradox?

虽然英国和其他地方的政策制定者试图通过扩大儿童保育服务和其他工作/家庭政策来提高妇女的就业率，但研究表明，这些措施无意中加剧了男女在不同“类型”的工作和部门中的隔离（Mandel & Semyonov, 2006）。研究表明，慷慨的家庭政策导致雇主在招聘、培训和晋升方面歧视女性，因为雇主认为女性更有可能利用法定假期和灵活的工作时间。此外，国家提供的保健、教育和护理使妇女在公共部门从事传统意义上的女性服务工作，而远离私营部门（待遇较好的）工作。因此，研究表明，福利国家对女性越“友好”，女性就越难进入男性主导的工作和部门，包括最赚钱的管理职位（曼德尔，2012），尤其是如果她们是高技能的女性。然而，最近的证据表明，在慷慨的福利政策下，处于不利地位的妇女获得更好工作的机会并非不可避免。例如，在妇女友好政策最发达的瑞典，妇女在高级管理职位上的比例目前为36%；相比之下，英国的这一数字为28%，而英国的性别就业隔离历史上一直较低（欧盟统计局，2018年）。因此，该项目的目的是通过使用以前未用于研究这一研究难题的创新方法和方法，更清晰、更全面地了解福利国家如何影响性别就业隔离。为此，该项目被组织为三个“工作包”（wp）。WP1研究了21个发达经济体国家层面的条件如何调节福利国家与就业性别隔离之间的关系。这包括中欧和东欧国家，之前的研究往往忽视了这些国家。国家一级的条件包括文化规范、关于妇女在公司董事会任职的规定和劳动力市场特点。数据将从国际社会调查方案、经合发组织、欧共体统计局、全球媒体监测项目、世界银行和德勤董事会中的妇女项目汇编。然后，WP2利用欧洲社会调查的区域和个人层面的数据，调查福利国家政策对女性职业发展的影响如何根据她的社会经济地位和她所生活的特定经济和社会背景而变化。随后，WP3进行了系统的比较案例研究，以深入探讨为什么某些福利国家和地区表现出高度的性别不平等而阶级不平等程度较低，而在其他地方则相反的潜在机制。数据来自与WP1和WP2相同的来源，以及学术文献和其他相关来源（例如政府网站）。该项目很重要，因为其研究结果将告知政策制定者，他们的政策如何影响不同的妇女群体，以及如何克服“包容-不平等”困境（Pettit & Hook, 2009），即通过提供适当的家庭政策和服务，使更多的妇女进入劳动力市场，但不引导妇女进入刻板的女性职业，破坏她们的职业发展。解决这种隔离问题很重要，因为它是性别薪酬差距的主要原因（Mandel & Semyonov, 2014），并支持低估女性工作（Grimshaw & Rubery, 2007）。与此同时，让更多的女性进入权力职位可以为低技能的职业女性带来积极的“涓滴效应”，因为性别平衡的高层管理团队与女性友好的工作场所特征和做法有关，可以使所有女性受益（Kowalewska, 2017b）。

While policymakers in the UK and elsewhere have sought to increase women's employment rates by expanding childcare services and other work/family policies, research suggests these measures have the unintentional consequence of reinforcing the segregation of men and women into different 'types' of jobs and sectors (Mandel & Semyonov, 2006). Studies have shown that generous family policies lead employers to discriminate against women when it comes to hiring, training, and promotions, as employers assume that women are more likely to make use of statutory leaves and flexible working. Furthermore, state provision of health, education, and care draws women into stereotypically female service jobs in the public sector and away from (better-paid) jobs in the private sector. Accordingly, research suggests that the more 'women-friendly' a welfare state is, the harder it will be for women - especially if they are highly skilled - to break into male-dominated jobs and sectors, including the most lucrative managerial positions (Mandel, 2012).Yet, more recent evidence indicates that women's disadvantaged access to better jobs is not inevitable under generous welfare policies. For instance, women's share of senior management positions in Sweden, where women-friendly policies are most developed, now stands at 36%; this compares to a figure of 28% in the UK, where gender employment segregation has historically been lower (Eurostat, 2018). Thus, the aim of this project is to provide a clearer and fuller understanding of how welfare states impact on gender employment segregation by using innovative methods and approaches that have not been used to examine this research puzzle before. To this aim, the project is organised into three 'work packages' (WPs). WP1 examines how conditions at the country-level mediate the relationship between welfare states and gender segregation in employment across 21 advanced economies. This includes Central and Eastern European countries, which prior research has tended to overlook. The country-level conditions included are cultural norms, regulations regarding women's representation on corporate boards, and labour-market characteristics. Data will be compiled from the International Social Survey Programme, OECD, Eurostat, the Global Media Monitoring Project, the World Bank, and Deloitte's Women in the Boardroom project. WP2 then investigates how the impact of welfare-state policies on a woman's career progression varies according to her socioeconomic position and the specific economic and social context in which she lives, using regional and individual-level data from the European Social Survey. Subsequently, WP3 carries out systematic comparative case studies to explore in depth the underlying mechanisms that explain why certain welfare states and regions exhibit high levels of gender inequality but low levels of class inequality, while in other places, the opposite is true. Data are drawn from the same sources as for WP1 and WP2, as well as academic literature and other relevant sources (e.g. government websites).The project is important because its findings will inform policymakers about how their policies affect different groups of women and how to overcome the 'inclusion-inequality' dilemma (Pettit & Hook, 2009), i.e. bring more women into the workforce by providing adequate family policies and services, but without channelling women into stereotypically feminine occupations and undermining their career progression. Tackling such segregation matters because it is a leading cause of the gender pay gap (Mandel & Semyonov, 2014) and underpins the undervaluation of women's work (Grimshaw & Rubery, 2007). At the same time, bringing more women into positions of power can have positive 'trickle-down' benefits for lower-skilled working women, as gender-balanced top-management teams are associated with female-friendly workplace characteristics and practices that can benefit all women (Kowalewska, 2017b)