JESP symposium: climate change and social policy

Climate change is surely one of the most encompassing and egregious threats in Europe today, so it is appropriate that we consider its implications for social policy in Europe. It is true that climate change is a separate agenda, the preserve of a distinct academic and epistemic community, scholarly discourse, policy community, institutional structures and modes of governance; but the linkages between these two issues – climate change and its policy corollaries, and the ‘traditional’ domain of social policies – seem to us so strong and salient that they should be aired in a social policy journal

Labour Market Structures and Women's Employment Levels

With the rise in women’s part-time work in many Western industrialised countries, a better understanding of women’s employment decisions necessitates the distinction between different employment levels and varying structural opportunities that facilitate or hinder female employment. This article analyses for Switzerland how structural factors affect women’s decisions to work marginal part-time, substantial part-time, full-time or to stay out of the labour force. The analyses are based on the Swiss Labour Force Survey. The logistic regression findings show that labour market and firm-related opportunity structures affect the three types of employment levels differently. They also play a much larger role in the probability of working marginal part-time than in that of working substantial part-time or full-time