Religious Influences on Work–Family Trade-Offs

Despite a large body of research on the influences of religion on family life and gender ideology, few studies examined how religion affects work—family strategies. One set of strategies involves making employment or family trade-offs—strategies of devoting time or attention to either work or family in a situation in which one cannot devote the preferred amount of time and attention to both, strategies that may be experienced as making sacrifices, hard choices, or accommodations. Using 1996 General Social Survey data, the authors analyze how religion affects employment and family trade-offs. They develop hypotheses about the institutional effects of religious involvement and effects of involvement in a conservative religious subculture. They find that religious involvement and religious subculture shape trade-offs in gender-specific ways, and that religion affects more of men\u27s trade-offs. They conclude by calling for further research on the social sources of cultural frameworks that shape men\u27s and women\u27s work—family strategies

Early Childhood/Child Welfare Priority

This is the executive summary of a white paper that describes the context, current capacity, areas of opportunity, and next steps for the UNO Early Childhood/Child Welfare Priority (ECCW). It responds to the need for comprehensive integrated systems of services designed to give all young children (birth through age eight) access to what they need in the early years to succeed in school and in life. In this context, UNO recognizes ECCW as critical to our metropolitan university mission. Further, we must come together with early childhood service providers, P-12 districts, parents, policy makers, other University of Nebraska campuses, community service agencies and businesses to improve learning and developmental outcomes for all children, with emphasis on children who are at-risk and those with special needs

WORKING AT HOME: EXPERIENCES OF SKILLED

Based on a comprehensive literature review and detailed semistructured interviews with skilled workers who work at home, this article explores six research areas: reasons for working at home, the creation and maintenance of home/work boundaries, problems of isolation, distractions and temptations facing at-home workers, workaholism, and gender differences. The results indicate that white collar workers usually choose to work at home to reduce work/family conflicts or because of factors in the external labor market. Problems of creating and maintaining home/work boundaries, isolation, distractions and temptations at home, and workaholism do exist, but there was evidence that they may have been exaggerated in previous writing about at-home work. A combination of gender and life course stage better predicts differences in the experiences of the interviewees than does gender alone. The increasing number of white collar workers who work full time at home has recently attracted the interest of the popular press and scholars because working at home has advantage

How Islam influences women’s paid non-farm employment: evidence from 26 Indonesian and 37 Nigerian provinces

Studies on women’s employment in Muslim countries often mention Islam, but its influence is undertheorized and tests simply compare ‘Muslim’ women and areas to ‘non-Muslim’ women and areas. Here, multilevel analyses of Indonesia and Nigeria show this focus is not tenable: non-farm employment of Muslim women is not consistently lower than that of non-Muslim women, nor is it lower in Muslim-dominated provinces than in other provinces. A new theoretical frame conceptualizes religion’s influence in terms message and messenger. It is shown how different manifestations of Islam influence women’s non-farm employment, inside and outside the home. Empirically, the ideological strand of Islam is more important than differences between Islam and Christianity. In addition, when a conservative Islam is codified through Shari’a-based law women’s employment outside the home seems to be lower, but the presence of Islamic political parties seems to foster women’s access to the labor market through their focus on support for the poor