116 research outputs found
Maternal Employment and the State: Varieties of Familialism in Post-Socialist Countries
State socialism has undeniably shaped institutional legacies of post-socialist EU member states; not only had it produced extraordinary leap in terms of female employment, it also heralded significant change in the role of the state in the family. Therefore, post-socialist countries are often homogenised - not only historically (âformer Soviet Blocâ, âpost-socialistâ/âEasternâ group), but also on the ground of gender politics (âneo-/re-familialisticâ). This paper challenges such overly simplistic characterizations and offers a more nuanced assessment via analysis of their socialist past. It explores the specificity of socialist experiences and explains how this period heralded change in the role of the state in the family, in social organisation of care, and how gender roles were inscribed in different institutional settings and practices within societies. It demonstrates that similar history notwithstanding, countries adopted different models of socialism, with different roles and influence of organised politics, as well as interventions via public policies. They endorsed and legitimized different âethosâ of gendered norms and practices, which broadly followed three trajectories: that of familialism in the Eastern Bloc, where states relied on families to produce childcare; that of liberal state in Poland, where parents were left with no public support; and that of defamilialism in Slovenia, committed to female continuous employment. This paper demonstrates that countries departed state socialism with mixed legacies and collective experiences about social organisation of care and female employment, and thus invites perspectives for further academic debate about the âcommon socialist legacyâ and distinct âEastern welfare regime typeâ
Slovenia
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Gender Inequality in the Eastern European Labour Market on 26.10.16, available online: http://www.routledge.com/978113899985
Rethinking comparative childcare policy analysis: Example of Central and Eastern Europe
Comparative
research
routinely employ
s
a small number of indicators to compare
family
polic
ies across
countries. In these studies, government expenditure, participation of children in public childcare or length
of parental leave are
internationally recognised policy indicators
.
However,
the
y
have been subject of
academic controversy
and are less
adequate predictors of gendered policy incentives
.
This
paper
,
therefore,
theoretically and empirically explores and
discusse
s
how varieties of state de
-
familialism could
be more fully captured in a cross
-
country perspective. It
proposes a composite indic
ator for use in
gendered analysis of policy incentives
, one that
comprises the most salient features of
national
policies on
leave and childcare services
versus some combination of policy delivery and use
.
Thereby, it
pays
explicit
attention to the methodo
logical challenges and decisions that concern case selection, concept formation,
the role of counterfactuals, establishing of measurement validity, and multi
-
method design.
Finally, the
paper discusses the opportunities for future research that such approa
ch opens up. It empirically
explores
its applicability
on Ce
ntral and Eastern
EU member states
â
an
attempt which has gained little
methodologically substantiated attention so far
. Going beyond
the Western
welfare states it
demonstrate
s
its functionality a
nd shows
how
the
se
countries
could be integrated
in the corpus of comparative
welfare
state research
Maternal Employment in Post-Socialist Countries: Understanding the Implications of Childcare Policies
Post-socialist countries, especially those from the EU-2004 enlargement, have been distinguished by high employment rates of women in full-time jobs since the late 1950s. In the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia from Central Europe, and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the Baltic States, these ranged between 85 and 90 per cent, with practically no cross-country variation and narrow gender gaps in the late 1980s, just before the severe labour market disruptions in the 1990s (see, for example, United Nations Childrenâs Fund (UNICEF), 1999)
Lâadieu au modĂšle de « lâhomme soutien de famille ». Le prĂ©sent postsocialiste Ă la lumiĂšre du passĂ© socialiste
Abstract
Farewell to Male Breadwinning. A post-socialist present seen in the light of a socialist past
State socialism fashioned the institutional legacy of the European Unionâs post-socialist member
states. Not only did it take female employment a major step forward, it also did much to develop
the role of the State in the family. Research on welfare-state policies therefore tends to look at
post-socialist countries as a single, uniform whole. This article intends to bring a more nuanced
view by analysing these countriesâ socialist past. It shows that the various countries adopted
distinct models of socialism that confirmed and legitimised different family policies and gender
roles. Not all of them emerged from the era of state socialism with the same legacy, nor with the
same collective experience of the social organisation of childcare facilities and female
employment. This contribution therefore offers to pursue the debate on a â shared socialist legacyâ
and a distinct post-socialist social welfare system.
Résumé
Le socialisme dâĂtat a façonnĂ© lâhĂ©ritage institutionnel des Ătats membres de lâUnion europĂ©enne
postsocialistes. Il a non seulement permis Ă lâemploi des femmes de faire un bond important, mais
aussi fait largement Ă©voluer le rĂŽle de lâĂtat dans la famille. La recherche sur les rĂ©gimes dâĂtatprovidence
a donc tendance Ă traiter les pays postsocialistes comme un ensemble, unique et
homogĂšne. Cet article sâefforce de proposer une vision plus nuancĂ©e en analysant le passĂ©
socialiste de ces pays. Il montre que ces pays avaient adopté des modÚles de socialisme distincts,
entérinant et légitimant des politiques familiales et une répartition des rÎles entre les genres
diffĂ©rentes. Tous ne sont pas sortis de lâĂšre du socialisme dâĂtat avec le mĂȘme hĂ©ritage ni avec la
mĂȘme expĂ©rience collective de lâorganisation sociale de lâaccueil des enfants et de lâemploi des
femmes. Cette contribution invite par consĂ©quent Ă poursuivre le dĂ©bat sur « lâhĂ©ritage socialiste
commun » et sur le régime de protection sociale postsocialiste distinct
OLAP for health statistics: how to turn a simple spreadsheet into a powerful analytical tool
Over the last ten years, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) has become a very popular tool for interactive analysis of multidimensional information. Providing online operation and flexible summarising, tabulating and charting options, it has become an essential part of the decision support process in corporate setting. Our aim is to demonstrate how easily applicable and useful OLAP can be in the public sector. To achieve that, we used data compiled from different sources for the purpose of exploring the relations between causes of death (according to ICD-10) and socio-economic characteristics (educational level, marital status, profession, etc.) for selected years 1992, 1995 and 1998 in Slovenia. Using a standard personal computer and the WindowsÂź platform, the application was implemented in MicrosoftÂź Excel 2000, without any programming. After data cleansing (elimination of incorrect entries, duplicates and inconsistencies based on exploratory statistical methods), the case-based spreadsheet data was instantly converted into an OLAP application with the user-friendly pivot table technology. A bonus of this approach is that the results can be made directly accessible over the WWW by publishing the workbook to a web server. Provided that the user has MicrosoftÂź Internet Explorer and MicrosoftÂź Office 2000 installed, all the drill-in, drill-out and dimension-swapping capabilities are accessible within the browser, while the data source remains fully protected. Privacy constraints are respected since all the information is only provided at the aggregate level. Even though our dataset provides exhaustive coverage of mortality at the national level, storage and processing capabilities did not prove to be an issue. Hence, we argue that OLAP methodology should find a place in health statistics. With proper data collection and/or transformations, informative comparisons within the study population and with international databases become readily accessible. The key advantage of OLAP over relational database management systems and ordinary tables is interactive browsing of multidimensional and hierarchical data, while OLAP can also aid data integrity checking and reporting
Whereâs the Community in Community, Work and Family? A Community-based Capabilities Approach
Community is a key dimension in the workâfamily interface as highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Yet it is critically understudied by much workâfamily scholarship. We highlight and address crucial barriers preventing the integration of the community concept, developing an interdisciplinary community-based capabilities approach. This approach conceptualizes three components of community: local relationships, local policies and locality (place, space and scale). Local relationships include formal and informal relationships, networks, and a sense of belonging. Dependent on the broader socio-economic context, local policies and services can provide important resources for managing these relationships and workâlife situations more generally. These relationships and policies are embedded in specific geographical localities, shaping and being shaped by social action. This interdisciplinary conceptualization of community allows relational, spatial, structural and temporal aspects of community to be integrated into a more broadly applicable conceptual approach. We base this approach on the capability approach, which allows for a pluralistic workâlife framework of what individuals value and do. We further argue for a conceptualization of family as community, moving towards a workâcommunity interface. The resulting conceptual approach is useful for explaining workâlife processes for individuals with and without care responsibilities, and offers a new framework for studying the social trends intensely and rapidly highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic
Creating capabilities: Childcare policies in comparative perspective
This article analyses childcare services in six countries, assessing this policy instrumentâs potential to facilitate parentsâ capabilities for arranging childcare in a way they have reason to value. It draws on Senâs capability approach to conceptualize and assess childcare policy design across five key aspects of childcare provision (accessibility, availability, affordability, quality and flexibility) in a country-comparative perspective. The conceptualization of the multifaceted nature of childcare provides compelling insights into the complexity of comparing childcare services across countries. The ensuing analysis and comprehensive overview of national policies challenges the idea of a defamilialization policy cluster, which masks key distinctions between public and market service provision. The more nuanced conceptualization and operationalization of childcare policy design through the capability approach reveals parentsâ real opportunities for arranging childcare and the varying effects of policy design across gender and class. In addition, it goes beyond implicit commodification assumptions and opens up space for parentsâ potential desire for multiple care arrangement possibilities
Highly variable AFLP and S-SAP markers for the identification of âMalbecâ and âSyrahâ clones
The retrotransposon-based sequence-specific amplification polymorphism (S-SAP) and the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) marker systems were used to assess the clonal variation of 14 âSyrahâ and 22 âMalbecâ (Vitis vinifera L.) clones. The utility of S-SAP markers was compared to that of AFLP markers. On the basis of our results, S-SAP is more informative marker system and showed higher average number of polymorphic bands per cultivar group than AFLP. Relationships among clones were analyzed by cluster analysis using unweighted pair-groups using arithmetic averages and in both cases revealed well defined groups of clones, in which âMalbecâ clones were separated from âSyrahâ clones. High variability of some clones could also be seen within these clusters. The different levels of polymorphism for âMalbecâ and âSyrahâ obtained in this study suggest that âMalbecâ exhibits a higher mutation frequency than âSyrahâ. Our results indicate that higher proportion of polymorphic bands in S-SAP makes it a less labour-intensive and more efficient approach for developing markers for clonal identification.
Highly variable AFLP and S-SAP markers for the identification of "Malbec" and "Syrah" clones
The retrotransposon-based sequence-specific amplification polymorphism (S-SAP) and the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) marker systems were used to assess the clonal variation of 14 âSyrahâ and 22 âMalbecâ (Vitis vinifera L.) clones. The utility of S-SAP markers was compared to that of AFLP markers. On the basis of our results, S-SAP is more informative marker system and showed higher average number of polymorphic bands per cultivar group than AFLP. Relationships among clones were analyzed by cluster analysis using unweighted pair-groups using arithmetic averages and in both cases revealed well defined groups of clones, in which âMalbecâ clones were separated from âSyrahâ clones. High variability of some clones could also be seen within these clusters. The different levels of polymorphism for âMalbecâ and âSyrahâ obtained in this study suggest that âMalbecâ exhibits a higher mutation frequency than âSyrahâ. Our results indicate that higher proportion of polymorphic bands in S-SAP makes it a less labour-intensive and more efficient approach for developing markers for clonal identification.Fil: Stajner, N.. University of Ljubljana; EsloveniaFil: Jakse, J.. University of Ljubljana; EsloveniaFil: Javornik, B.. University of Ljubljana; EsloveniaFil: Masuelli, Ricardo Williams. Instituto Nacional de TecnologĂa Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Mendoza-san Juan. EstaciĂłn Experimental Agropecuaria la Consulta. Agencia de ExtensiĂłn Rural la Consulta; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ArgentinaFil: MartĂnez, Liliana Estela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de BiologĂa AgrĂcola de Mendoza. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de BiologĂa AgrĂcola de Mendoza; Argentin
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