Women’s Perceptions of Consequences of Career Interruption due to Childcare in Central and Eastern Europe

The paper aims to examine the effect of the transition from a socialist regime to democracy and liberal economy on women’s perceptions of the consequences of breaks in labour market participation due to childcare on their further careers in seven post-socialist countries. More precisely, it investigates whether women in Central and Eastern Europe who gave birth to at least one child after 1987 were more likely to experience negative consequences for their further professional life as a result of career interruptions due to childcare than women who had their children during the socialist era. The analysis is conducted in two steps. In the first step, the effect of the political transition is examined in the Central European region as a whole, thus on the pooled data including all the seven countries. In the second step, the paper tests whether the effect of the transition varies significantly from country to country, and if yes, in which countries it had the biggest impact. In both steps, the effect of the transition is examined while controlling for selected individual characteristics that are mentioned in the literature as possible predictors of subjective evaluation of consequences of career breaks on women’s further professional development. In the paper we use data from the 2004 European Social Survey.female emloyement ; labour market inactivity ; child care ; subjective indicators

Preparation of circular Rydberg states in helium using the crossed fields method

Helium atoms have been prepared in the circular $|n=55,\ell=54,m_{\ell}=+54\rangle$ Rydberg state using the crossed electric and magnetic fields method. The atoms, initially travelling in pulsed supersonic beams, were photoexcited from the metastable 1s2s\,^3S_1 level to the outermost, $m_{\ell}=0$ Rydberg-Stark state with $n=55$ in the presence of a strong electric field and weak perpendicular magnetic field. Following excitation, the electric field was adiabatically switched off causing the atoms to evolve into the circular state with $m_{\ell}=+54$ defined with respect to the magnetic field quantization axis. The circular states were detected by ramped electric field ionization along the magnetic field axis. The dependence of the circular state production efficiency on the strength of the excitation electric field, and the electric-field switch-off time was studied, and microwave spectroscopy of the circular-to-circular $|55,54,+54\rangle\rightarrow|56,55,+55\rangle$ transition at $\sim38.5$~GHz was performed.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure