Gender Diversity and Firm Performance: Evidence from Dutch and Danish Boardrooms

Drawing on the business case for gender diversity, this article examines whether board gender diversity has a positive effect on firm performance, based on evidence from the Netherlands and Denmark. We use empirical data on 186 listed firms observed in 2007, of which 102 Dutch and 84 Danish. Of these firms, almost 40% have at least one woman in the boardroom. Within boards the average share of women is only 5.4%. In order to investigate the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance, two-stage least-squares estimation is applied, using Tobin's Q as a measure of performance. Our findings indicate that there is no effect of board gender diversity on firm performance. This implies that the business case for board gender diversity is not supported for this particular sample. Our finding seems in line with most European research.Corporate governance, firm performance, board diversity, female board representation

Labour market flexibility in the Netherlands:looking for winners and losers

Almost two decades have passed since Dutch employers, unions and the government, in their struggle against unemployment, agreed on a policy to increase labour market flexibility. Over the years the share of flexible jobs in the Netherlands has gradually increased to around ten percent. According to some parties the introduction of more labour market flexibility would lead to more inequality and a division in the labour market between workers with permanent employment and an underclass of women, immigrant workers and poorly educated workers with temporary contracts.The Dutch government has always claimed that a special set of legal rules regarding labour market flexibility would prevent the development of such an underclass. In this article three questions are addressed: Who has a flexible labour contract and who is in permanent employment? What is the pattern of transition to permanent contracts? What are the consequences for wage rates for those on permanent or flexible contracts respectively? The answers to these questions are provided using panel data for the period 1986–96.The results show that labour market flexibility has been introduced into the Dutch labour market without detrimental consequences for specific groups of workers

De pandemie als mogelijke katalysator van emancipatie

Tijdens de coronapandemie moesten veel ouders thuiswerken en tegelijkertijd voor de kinderen zorgen en hen ondersteunen bij thuisonderwijs. Zorgtaken worden traditioneel vaker door vrouwen gedaan. Tijdens de pandemie zagen we echter dat ook vaders meer gingen zorgen. Hoewel de pandemie aanvankelijk een mogelijke katalysator van emancipatie leek, zijn oude patronen hardnekkig. Na verloop van tijd keerden veel ouders terug naar hun oorspronkelijke, traditionele verdeling van arbeid en zorg. We reflecteren op de beleidsimplicaties

Fathers stepping up? A cross-national comparison of fathers’ domestic labour and parents’ satisfaction with the division of domestic labour during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted work and family life around the world. For parents, this upending meant a potential re-negotiation of the ‘status quo’ in the gendered division of labour. A comparative lens provides extended understandings of changes in fathers’ domestic work based in socio-cultural context–in assessing the size and consequences of change in domestic labour in relation to the type of work-care regime. Using novel harmonized data from four countries (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) and a work-care regime framework, this study examines cross-national changes in fathers’ shares of domestic labour during the early months of the pandemic and whether these changes are associated with parents’ satisfaction with the division of labour. Results indicate that fathers’ shares of housework and childcare increased early in the pandemic in all countries, with fathers’ increased shares of housework being particularly pronounced in the US. Results also show an association between fathers’ increased shares of domestic labour and mothers’ increased satisfaction with the division of domestic labour in the US, Canada, and the UK. Such comparative work promises to be generative for understanding the pandemic’s imprint on gender relations far into the future

Unequal but balanced : Highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 lockdown in Finland and the Netherlands

One year after the European work–life balance directive, which recognises the need for work–family policy support, measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began shaping parents’ work–life balance in significant ways. Academically, we are challenged to explore whether existing theoretical frameworks hold in this new environment with combined old and new policy frameworks. We are also challenged to understand the nuanced ways in which the first lockdown affects the combination of paid work and care. We address both of these issues, providing a cross-sectional comparative analysis of highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland and the Netherlands. Our findings show that highly educated Finnish mothers have more difficulty combining work and care during the first lockdown than Dutch mothers. The absence of state-provided care during the lockdown creates greater difficulty for full-time working Finnish mothers in a dual-earner/state-carer system than an absence of such care in the Dutch one-and-a-half earner system, where most mothers work part time. Further analyses suggest variation in part-time and (nearly) full-time hours mitigates the work–life balance experiences of highly educated Dutch mothers. Additional factors explaining cross-country variation or similarities include the presence of young children and the presence of a partner. We discuss these findings in light of current theoretical frameworks and highlight avenues for future research.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Work-Family Conflict in the European Union: The Impact of Organizational and Public Facilities

Today, as an increasing share of women and men is involved in both paid tasks at work and unpaid care tasks for children and other relatives, more people are at risk of work-family conflict, which can be a major threat to well-being and mental, but also physical health. Both organizations and governments invest in arrangements that are meant to support individuals in finding a balance between work and family life. The twofold goal of our article was to establish the level of work-family conflict in the member states of the European Union by gender and to analyze to what extent different arrangements at the organizational level as well the public level help to reduce this. Using the European Working Conditions Survey supplemented with macro-data on work-family facilities and the economic and emancipation climate in a country, we performed multilevel analyses. Our findings show that the intensity of work-family conflict does not vary widely in EU28. In most countries, men experience less work-family conflict than women, although the difference is small. Caring for children and providing informal care increases perceived work-life conflict. The relatively small country differences in work-family conflict show that different combinations of national facilities and organizational arrangements together can have the same impact on individuals; apparently, there are several ways to realize the same goal of work-family conflict reduction