How much do children really cost? Maternity benefits and career opportunities of women in academia

Motherhood and professional achievements appear as conflicting goals even for academic women. This project explores this tension by focusing on a set of provisions on parental and maternity leaves across 165 higher education institutions in the UK. Generous maternity provisions generate countervailing incentives for female academics. On the one hand, advantageous policies can foster women’s productivity in terms of research outcomes allowing them to take time out of work without income and career break concerns. On the other hand, women can exploit generous provisions without generating returnable results for the academic institution. We argue that adverse selection problems lead universities to differentiate among academic staff by offering two different types of maternity provisions (more vs less generous maternity leaves) in order to “test” women’s commitment and research ability before offering permanent contracts. Our results support this this line of argumentation. We also find that generous maternity leaves and childcare provisions positively affect the number of women at research and professorship levels

The motherhood penalties : insights from women in UK academia

We use an original survey of academic women in the UK to investigate different dimensions of the motherhood penalty. Being a mother has no effect on salaries, but still slows down career progression even in such a high-skilled sector. Motherhood has an ambivalent impact on women’s perception of their working environment: improving satisfaction, but reducing perception of salary fairness relative to men. Our paper also explores how different policies can mitigate the motherhood penalties. We find that more generous maternity provisions are associated with higher salary, potentially because generosity reduces the crowding out of research activity. Better availability of childcare and an even distribution of responsibilities within the household correlate positively with earnings. Our findings also highlight the importance of a supportive work environment for mothers’ career and well-being at the workplace. Taken together, these findings suggest the necessity of a multi-faceted policy response to the motherhood penalties

Motherhood in academia : a novel dataset with an application to maternity leave uptake

Legislation over the past two decades enhanced the availability and quantity of statutory maternity leave in the United Kingdom. In high-skilled sectors, many employers top up this maternity leave in an effort to retain and develop the careers of women. As leave provision became more generous, debates emerged as to the role, if any, these enhanced benefits have in retaining women in high status occupation and facilitating their career growth. Further, individual situations and employment status may prevent women from taking advantage of enhanced benefits. This paper presents findings from a comprehensive survey of thousands of women in the UK Higher Education sector and documents how the lives of academic mothers changed over the past quarter century. Contract status and the partner’s participation in parenting has significant effects on the types of maternity leave taken. We reflect on these findings and discuss future research in the area of labour market equity and productivity the availability of this comprehensive quantitative survey of academic women can facilitate

The “Peer-Effect” in Counterterrorist Policies

AbstractExisting accounts posit that defensively oriented counterterrorist policies create negative externalities and result in regulatory competition that induces governments to increasingly tighten their policies. We argue that rather than causing an unconditional global “race to the top,” spatial dependence in counterterrorist policies is limited to within groups of countries exposed to a similar level of threat from international terrorism. Countries strongly differ in their propensity to become the target of an international terror attack. Governments can safely ignore counterterrorist policies enacted by countries outside their “peer group,” but they must pay attention to measures undertaken by their peers. We test several predictions derived from our theory in an empirical analysis of counterterrorist regulations in twenty Western developed-country democracies over the period 2001 to 2008.</jats:p

Maternity leaves in Academia : why are some UK universities more generous than others?

Statutory parental leave provisions in the UK are amongst the least generous as compared to other EU and OECD countries. That is why most companies and other institutions, such as universities, top these legal provisions up with more generous occupational parental leave packages (OMPs). Yet, they don’t do so uniformly. Indeed, the generosity of OMPs offered by HEIs across the UK differ greatly. This paper examines both theoretically and empirically why this is the case. We find that income of HEIs doesn’t make a difference but size in terms of number of employees as well as the student-to-staff ratio do. Our results also show that more research intense universities with a higher previous share of female professors and female academics at child-bearing age provide more generous maternity pay. We offer a range of explanations for these findings

The politics of targeted and untargeted counterterrorist regulations

Civil liberties came under pressure after Al Qaeda’s attacks in the U.S. and Europe. Governments in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries started questioning the effectiveness of counterterrorist policies and regulations. Incumbents responded to terrorism not only by introducing ex novo (or re-adapting) laws and regulations affecting a large set of civil rights; they also responded to international terrorism by choosing between an untargeted and a targeted legislative response. Some governments reduced the liberties of foreign foes more than the freedoms of citizens, while others preferred burdening all individuals within their borders, immigrants and citizens alike. This article analyzes the determinants of targeted and untargeted antiterrorist responses to Al Qaeda terrorism in a sample of 20 Western democracies from 2000 to 2008. The findings suggest that patterns of targeted legislation were more pronounced in countries governed by right-wing incumbents and those where the decisional power in the cabinet is divided among a few number of political parties. In addition, a larger share of Muslims and the degree of ethnic fractionalization played a relevant role in determining governments’ choices of prime targets

Legislative Response to International Terrorism

This article presents a new dataset dubbed LeRIT which identifies the legislative response to international terrorism in 20 liberal Western democracies, 2001-08. The dataset distinguishes 30 regulations governments may implement with the intention of reducing the risk of terrorist attacks. LeRIT covers legislation dealing with, inter alia, the rights of the executive to intercept, collect and store communications for anti-terrorist purposes, changes in pre-charge detention for terror suspects and modifications of immigration regimes. I aggregate these distinct regulations into three composite indices, distinguishing according to the main target of regulations, citizens, suspects, and immigrants. This dataset contributes to the analysis of the consequences of international terrorism and provides a detailed account of the patterns in the legislative response to international terrorism from 2000 to 2008. I show that while all liberal Western democracies reinforced their counter-terrorist legislation, the scope of countries’ regulatory response to terrorism differed largely. Some countries (i.e. the UK and the USA) implemented the full battery of regulatory responses while others (i.e. Scandinavian countries but also Canada and Switzerland) remained reluctant to cut deeply into the net of civil rights for citizens, suspects and immigrants alike. To further demonstrate the potential usefulness of the dataset, the article includes an example of analysis on the legislative response to international terrorism. The reported baseline model suggests that a combination of risk assessment and political factors influence governments’ willingness to cut deep into the net of civil rights.counter-terrorism, international terrorism, legislation, reforms