What makes dual career couples work? A longitudinal comparative mixed methods analysis

纵向研究主要集中在妇女维持事业的问题上。然而，在一段关系中，母亲是挣扎的一方，因为父亲经常依靠他们的无偿工作来维持事业（Blossfeld和Drobnic, 2001; Gershuny, 2000）。这表明，在成为父母后，夫妻之间劳动分工的变化是生命过程中职业投资中性别不平等问题的核心。即将成为父母的女性也占英国女性人口的大多数（英国国家统计局，2012年）。因此，这个项目的主要目标是了解夫妻的职业在他们的生活中是如何相互关联的。第二个目标是分析哪些因素与双重职业失败和双重职业成功有关。理论重构需要新的方法论进步。我在博士期间开发的双曲线方法填补了这一空白，并将在项目过程中结合以下两个最近的数据进展进一步发展，使这些问题能够得到回答。(1)过去，由于小组数据只涵盖较短的时间跨度，所以不可能观察到夫妻的长期职业轨迹，而现在，美国、英国和德国的小组研究以及瑞典的登记数据涵盖了长达45年的夫妻生活。这样就可以比较不同历史时期同一生命历程阶段的不同家庭政策支持水平，并分析在不同生命历程阶段夫妻行为与家庭支持的关系。面板数据集在令人惊讶的未充分利用的跨国等效文件中得到了协调，这大大减少了比较研究的启动时间。(2)这个令人兴奋的定量机会与一个新的定性生命历程组成部分相结合：研究人员现在才被允许直接安排对小组参与者的采访。这种独特的数据组合——使用纵向面板和登记数据以及定性数据来调查宏观和微观层面因素的混合方法——使夫妻一生中职业生涯的叙述前所未有地丰富。这一申请是及时的，因为更好地了解夫妇的职业生涯可能会为当前的政策制定者提供有效支持夫妇职业生涯的努力（如2014年美国白宫工薪家庭峰会和英国引入的26周陪产假，如果母亲回到工作岗位）。这项研究也很重要，因为(1)在宏观层面上，双重职业的成功可以帮助平衡政府的社会保障账簿，人口老龄化使政府的社会保障账簿紧张，而人口老龄化必须由越来越少的工人来支撑。(2)更好地利用人力资本可以帮助企业找到他们需要的员工。(3)在微观层面上，双职业成功可以降低女性和夫妻在离婚或男性经济支柱失业的情况下陷入贫困的风险。(4)它可以通过减少夫妻在整个生命过程中人力资本投资方面的不平等，为更公平的社会做出贡献（经合组织，2013年）。(5)就个人幸福感而言，它可以提高夫妻生活质量（正如我的博士研究结果所表明的那样）。总的来说，它可能有助于提高英国经济表现的竞争力，促进社会的公平。该项目将使我能够跨越学科以及定性和定量，注册和面板数据。它将为未来的比较工作建立能力，从而为英国目前在纵向和大行政数据方面的大量投资增加价值。2016年开始的项目至关重要，因为它将使我能够与两个互补的、不重叠的ESRC/ERC项目一起工作。该项目为时间利用研究中心对一天的分析增加了一个长期的夫妻工作战略视角，并可以为面板数据协调项目提供信息

Longitudinal research has mainly focussed on women's problems in maintaining a career. However, mothers in a relationship are the ones who struggle because fathers often rely on their unpaid work efforts to maintain a career (Blossfeld and Drobnic, 2001, Gershuny, 2000). This suggests that couple-level shifts in the division of labour upon entering parenthood are at the heart of the problem of gender inequalities in life course career investment. Women who enter parenthood are also the majority of the UK female population (Office for National Statistics, 2012). Hence, this project's main goal is to understand how couples' careers are interrelated across their lives. The second goal is to analyse which factors are associated with dual career failure and dual career success.The theoretical re-framing requires new methodological advances. The dual curve approach, which I developed during my PhD, to fill this gap and which I will further develop in the course of the project in combination with the following two recent data advances, enables these questions to be answered. (1) Whereas it used not to be possible to look at couples' long-term career trajectories because panel data only covered short time-spans, the US, UK, and German panel studies and Swedish register data now cover up to 45 years of couples' lives. This enables a comparison of the same life course stage at different historical eras with different levels of family policy support and analysis of how couple-level behaviour relates to family support across different life course stages. The panel datasets have been harmonized in the surprisingly underused Cross National Equivalent File which greatly reduces the start-up time for comparative research. (2) This exciting quantitative opportunity is paired with a new qualitative life course component: Researchers are only now being given direct access to arrange interviews with panel participants. This unique data combination - a mixed methods approach investigating macro- and micro-level factors using both longitudinal panel and register data as well as qualitative data - enables an unprecedentedly rich narrative of couples' careers across their lives.This application is timely because a better understanding of couples' careers may inform current policy makers' efforts to efficiently support couples' careers (as exemplified by the 2014 US White House Summit on Working Families and the introduction of 26 weeks of paternity leave if the mother returns to work in the UK). The research is also important because (1) on the macro-level, dual career success can help balance governments' social security books, which are strained by an ageing population which has to be supported by an ever smaller number of workers. (2) A better use of human capital can help companies find the employees they need. (3) On the micro-level, dual career success can decrease women's and couples' risks of falling into poverty in case of divorce or the unemployment of the male breadwinner. (4) It can contribute to a fairer society by reducing inequalities within the couple with regards to human capital investments across the life course (OECD, 2013). And (5) it can increase the quality of couples' lives in terms of individual well-being (as my PhD findings suggest). Overall, it may contribute to a more competitive UK economic performance and a fairer society. The project will allow me to bridge disciplines as well as qualitative and quantitative, register and panel data. It will build the capacity for future comparative work thereby adding value to the UK's current large investments in longitudinal and big administrative data.A project start in 2016 is crucial as it will allow me to work alongside two complementary non-overlapping ESRC/ERC projects. The project adds a long-term couple-level work strategy perspective to the Centre for Time Use Research's analysis of the day and can inform a panel data harmonization project