The Impact of Learning on Women's Labour Market Transitions

Women play an increasingly important role in the labour market and as wage earners. Moreover, in many countries, young women have outperformed men in terms of educational attainment and qualification. Still, women’s human capital investment does not pay off as it does for men as they are still significantly disadvantaged on the labour market. Based on a qualitative empirical investigation with women in their mid-career, this article investigates the role of learning for women’s labour market participation and career paths. Women’s careers complexly intersect with role expectations, family needs, the career of the partner and anticipation of low returns of educational investment. This is typically reflected in discontinuous employment, part-time work and women’s secondary wage earner position in the family. Furthermore, women qualified at the intermediate skills level are more likely to move horizontally in their career than vertically. Horizontal mobility thereby requires significant engagement with learning as the German labour market usually requires a formal qualification to realise a career change. Learning and further training thus become instrumental to facilitate and support women’s career transitions, which are often aimed at re-entering regular employment after longer periods of family-related interruptions and/or to remain qualified in jobs in the social, health and educational fields, all of which are female dominated. Ultimately, women’s significant engagement with continuing learning is not primarily expected to support career advancement and vertical mobility, particularly as it can neither alter discontinuities of employment nor the German-specific nexus between welfare, family and education policies and the labour market. This challenges the lifelong learning rhetoric insofar as one key aim of lifelong learning policies is to support labour market inclusion and the mobility of disadvantaged groups

Bures-Wasserstein Means of Graphs

Finding the mean of sampled data is a fundamental task in machine learning and statistics. However, in cases where the data samples are graph objects, defining a mean is an inherently difficult task. We propose a novel framework for defining a graph mean via embeddings in the space of smooth graph signal distributions, where graph similarity can be measured using the Wasserstein metric. By finding a mean in this embedding space, we can recover a mean graph that preserves structural information. We establish the existence and uniqueness of the novel graph mean, and provide an iterative algorithm for computing it. To highlight the potential of our framework as a valuable tool for practical applications in machine learning, it is evaluated on various tasks, including k-means clustering of structured aligned graphs, classification of functional brain networks, and semi-supervised node classification in multi-layer graphs. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves consistent performance, outperforms existing baseline approaches, and improves the performance of state-of-the-art methods

Still a perfect model? The gender impact of vocational training in Germany

Reconstructing the parallel structure of ‘dual’ and ‘school-based’ vocational routes reveals the close connection between the German vocational training system and the segmentation of the labour market by gender. The example of jobs in childcare and pre-primary education shows that the legacy of semi-professionalism in these occupations is not just rooted in the nature of training and working conditions, but complexly interlinks with the prevalence of the male breadwinner model sustained by social policy regulations and the German taxation system. In France, by contrast, the central state takes responsibility for the provision of childcare from zero to six years of age to support female labour force participation and dual-earner couples. This has also fostered professionalisation in the respective occupations. Whilst this may not necessarily induce a degendering process at the level of horizontal segregation of vocational qualifications, it facilitates gender equality in terms of vertical mobility and the professional status of women

The German system of vocational education and training: challenges of gender, academisation and the integration of low-achieving youth

In Germany, the dual system of apprenticeship training has traditionally been very strong. The dominant position of the dual system, however, is being challenged by other training routes gaining significance, particularly tertiary education. This article investigates the extent to which this is leading to a restructuring of the dual system. Developments in school-based vocational programmes, trends of academisation and challenges deriving from qualifying low achievers are discussed. The growing significance of school-based programmes is linked to the gender impact of the vocational education and training (VET) system and the gender segmentation of the German labour market, while academisation reflects labour market demands for high skills. With dual study programmes and three and a half-year dual training, the dual system seeks to provide attractive training options for highly skilled young people. This, however, has made access to fully-qualifying vocational programmes very difficult for low-achieving young people, including migrants and refugees, thereby challenging the integration function of the German VET system.En Allemagne, le système dual de formation en apprentissage est traditionnellement bien implanté. La position dominante du système dual est toutefois remise en cause par d’autres filières de formation qui gagnent en importance, notamment l’enseignement supérieur. Le présent article examine dans quelle mesure cette situation a conduit à une restructuration du système dual. Il traite de l’évolution des programmes de formation professionnelle en milieu scolaire, des tendances de l’académisation et des défis posés par la qualification des personnes peu performantes. L’importance croissante des programmes scolaires est liée à l’impact en termes de genre du système d’enseignement et de formation professionnels (EFP) et à la segmentation du marché du travail allemand selon le genre, tandis que l’académisation reflète la demande de compétences élevées du marché du travail. Par le biais de programmes d’études en alternance et une formation en alternance de trois ans et demi, le système dual cherche à offrir des possibilités de formation attrayantes aux jeunes hautement qualifiés. Cela a toutefois rendu l’accès à des formations professionnelles pleinement qualifiantes très difficile pour les jeunes peu performants, y compris les migrants et les réfugiés, ce qui remet en cause la fonction d’intégration du système allemand d’enseignement et de formation professionnels.Die duale Ausbildung aufbauend auf der Lehrlingsausbildung hat in Deutschland eine lange Tradition und war über Jahrzehnte der wichtigste Ausbildungszweig. Durch die wachsende Bedeutung anderer Ausbildungs- und Bildungswege verliert das duale Ausbildungssystem jedoch zunehmend seine dominante Position. Hierbei spielt die kontinuierliche Ausweitung des tertiären Bildungsbereichs eine wichtige Rolle. Der vorliegende Artikel geht der Frage nach, inwieweit diese Entwicklung zu einer Umorientierung bzw. Neustrukturierung des dualen Systems führt. Hierfür werden Entwicklungen im vollschulischen Ausbildungssektor, Akademisierungstrends sowie Herausforderungen im Kontext der Qualifizierung von lern- und leistungsschwachen Jugendlichen diskutiert. Die zunehmende Bedeutung schulischer Ausbildungsprogramme richtet den Blick auf Genderaspekte des beruflichen Bildungssystems sowie der geschlechtsspezifischen Segmentierung des deutschen Arbeitsmarktes, während die Akademisierung der beruflichen Bildung im Zusammenhang mit der Nachfrage auf dem Arbeitsmarkt nach Höherqualifizierung steht. Duale Studienprogramme und dreieinhalbjährige Berufsausbildungen werden nicht zuletzt gestärkt, um attraktive Ausbildungsoptionen für leistungsstarke Schulabgänger anzubieten. Hierdurch haben sich jedoch die Zugangshürden zu vollqualifizierenden Ausbildungsprogrammen für lern- und leistungsschwache Jugendliche einschließlich Personen mit Migrationshintergrund und Flüchtlingen verstärkt. Dies stellt die Integrationsfunktion des deutschen Systems der beruflichen Bildung auf den Prüfstand

Estimating ensemble flows on a hidden Markov chain

We propose a new framework to estimate the evolution of an ensemble of indistinguishable agents on a hidden Markov chain using only aggregate output data. This work can be viewed as an extension of the recent developments in optimal mass transport and Schr\"odinger bridges to the finite state space hidden Markov chain setting. The flow of the ensemble is estimated by solving a maximum likelihood problem, which has a convex formulation at the infinite-particle limit, and we develop a fast numerical algorithm for it. We illustrate in two numerical examples how this framework can be used to track the flow of identical and indistinguishable dynamical systems.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Female Solo Self-Employment in Germany: The Role of Transitions and Learning From a Life Course Perspective

Based on a qualitative analysis of 12 solo self-employed women’s work biographies, this article investigates the (re)structuring effects of solo self-employment on the professional and private lives of women in Germany in their mid- and late-career stages. While solo self-employment has been gaining significance in the German labour market in the last two decades, it is largely an underresearched subject from the perspective of female labour market participation. Our study shows that the transition to working solo self-employed constitutes a marked break in female work biographies with lasting restructuring effects on their life courses. Constituting a deviation from the female standard life course, this move can be understood as a coping strategy of biographical discontinuities, which translates into specific patterns against the background that women (still) assume most of the care and housework responsibilities. How the transition to solo self-employment is being prepared and managed and what role learning and risk management play in the transition process is the focus of our article. Our aim is to better understand the underlining rationalisation logics of female solo self-employment in terms of labour market participation, reconciling work and family life, and professional self-realisation. While in the German welfare system solo self-employed bear higher risks of precarity and financial old age insecurity, solo self-employment is functional as an individual strategy for action, giving women the opportunity to do justice to their (mid) life courses and intrinsic needs to pursue both professional work and freedom of choice when and how to work. This may act as a corrective for gender inequalities in the world of work, especially when it comes to working in a self-determined way

Analyse der Entwicklung fachlicher Kompetenz und beruflicher Identität in der beruflichen Erstausbildung

Das zentrale Ausbildungsziel beruflicher Erstausbildungen besteht darin, Auszubildende in die Lage zu versetzen, jetzige und künftige berufliche Anforderungen erfolgreich bewältigen zu können. Mit größtenteils abstrakten Aufgaben, Multiple-Choice-Fragen und systematisierten Arbeitsproben, die das Prüfungswesen einsetzt, kann wenig Gehaltvolles über die Kompetenzentwicklung ausgesagt werden. In einem Modellvorhaben wurde eine Evaluationsmethode entwickelt, die mittels beruflicher Entwicklungsaufgaben die Kompetenzentwicklung der Auszubildenden erfasst und bewertet. Die Untersuchungsergebnisse erlauben einen fundierten Einblick in die Kompetenzentwicklung und die Herausbildung beruflicher Identität von Auszubildenden. Im Längsschnitt über den gesamten Ausbildungsverlauf konnten kritische Schwellen, Stufen und Übergänge, die berufliche Entwicklungen Auszubildender maßgeblich beeinflussen, identifiziert werden. (DIPF/Orig.)The central educational aim of the first phase of vocational training consists in making it possible for the trainees to successfully deal with present and future vocational demands. Mostly abstract tasks, multiple-choice questions, and systematized work samples used in the examination system hardly provide meaningful information on the development of competences. In a model plan, an evaluation method was developed which allows to record and assess the development of competences among trainees via job-related developmental tasks. The results offer a well founded insight into the development of competences and the emergence of the vocational identity of trainees. A longitudinal study on the full course of vocational training allows to identify critical thresholds, stages and transitions which greatly influence the vocational careers of trainees. (DIPF/Orig.

The role of learning and career guidance for managing mid-career transitions - comparing Germany and Denmark

In Germany and Denmark, the systems of further education and career guidance are well developed, offering a wide range of services and learning opportunities for targeted, specific and also general skills development. Based on an empirical study with mid-career individuals in both countries, the article investigates how the different systems support individuals to manage a career transition and develop their individual pathways. Mid-career transitions can be considered particularly challenging as they often reflect a more profound crisis and major concerns about future career opportunities. Constraints that prevent individuals in mid-career to fully benefit from the learning and guidance offers available can be identified in both countries. These range from the availability of programmes and accessing funding to getting the ‘right’ information. These constraints partly derive from adult education and guidance systems presupposing linear careers rather than disruptive trajectories and horizontal mobility

Mean field type control with species dependent dynamics via structured tensor optimization

In this work we consider mean field type control problems with multiple species that have different dynamics. We formulate the discretized problem using a new type of entropy-regularized multimarginal optimal transport problems where the cost is a decomposable structured tensor. A novel algorithm for solving such problems is derived, using this structure and leveraging recent results in entropy-regularized optimal transport. The algorithm is then demonstrated on a numerical example in robot coordination problem for search and rescue, where three different types of robots are used to cover a given area at minimal cost.Comment: 6 pages; 4 figure