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An influential body of work has identified a ‘welfare-state paradox’: work-family policies that bring women into the workforce also undermine women’s access to the top jobs. Missing from this literature is a consideration of how welfare-state interventions impact on women’s representation at the board-level specifically, rather than managerial and...
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... case of Italywhich, among all countries that display the outcome, has the lowest scores on childcare spending and enrolment rates -tells us that achieving at least 30 per cent of women on boards becomes possible when spending is ⩾ $3,900 per capita and enrolment is ⩾ 61.8 per cent (these are the respective figures for Italy). 5 Subsequently, a 'truth table' was constructed (Table 2). This lists all logically possible combinations of conditions and whether each combination is associated with the outcome. ...Context 2
... the solution formula is most simply expressed as: The solution formula shows four alternative pathways to the outcome. As Table 2 shows, France and Norway are in Pathway 1, which is defined as hard quotas combined with widespread childcare services and a large public-sector workforce. Italy belongs to Pathway 2 (a hard quota under residual work-family policies), while Germany displays Pathway 3 (a hard quota combined with optimal leaves and widespread childcare services but a smaller public sector). ...Citations
... The coverage was 0.75, meaning that these formulas explained approximately 75% of the cases with the outcome. The solution formula condenses all possible pathways associated with the outcome into a simple form (Kowalewska 2021). Similarly, in the Esfahan and Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari sub-basins, the solution formulas exhibited consistencies of 0.99 and 0.98, meeting the required criteria for consistency and coverage. ...
Water scarcity poses a significant threat to water-poor basins, highlighting the urgent need for good governance strategies. This study investigates the complex factors influencing optimal water governance in two Iranian basins: Zayandeh-Rud and Karoon. Using a normative approach and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyze the configurations of good water governance dimensions (effectiveness, efficiency, trust, and engagement) and related principles, including resilience, empathy, and conflict resolution, to understand their impact on achieving optimal water governance. Our findings reveal that while both basins demonstrate potential for achieving different levels of water governance, including critical, fragile, and talented, none exhibit optimal water governance. Notably, both basins struggle to meet the trust and engagement dimensions, underscoring the importance of addressing these aspects for improved water management. This research contributes to the understanding of the complex interplay of factors influencing good water governance in water-scarce regions, providing valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders seeking to enhance water resource management practices.
... It is especially noteworthy that the Covid-19 title is included here (Béland & Marier, 2020;Previtali et al., 2020). In the same period, the gender issue (Kowalewska, 2020) does not receive enough attention as in the first period, while, generally, it remains marginal issue with the Sweden theme and the sub-categories under it (Afonso et al., 2020). On the other hand, as in the 1st period, it is seen that limited attention is given to the childcare theme and sub-categories (West et al., 2020), and parenting theme and sub-categories (Dermott & Pomati, 2016). ...
While social policy refers to measures taken by society to improve and provide services to meet health and welfare needs, social policy studies are concerned with aspects of public policy, market transactions, personal consumption and interpersonal relationships that contribute to the well-being or wealth of individuals and/or groups. There has been an increase in the number of studies in the field of social policy. The main purpose of this study is to show how the research papers published in this field have undergone an evolutionary change in terms of emphasis. With 4,697 articles from seven different journals over 50 years, the most influential authors in the field, the impact of journals, the most collaborating countries, the evolutionary process of social policy studies in three different periods and the differences in transformations in this process are revealed. The number of studies making a general evaluation in the field of social policy is limited. The originality of the study shows how the studies in the journals, which are seen as a period of approximately 50 years, have transformed in this process. This study is expected to be a road map for researchers on what areas they will focus on according to the social policy transformation.
... Increasingly, however, research suggests that women leaders can be effective 'change agents' (Fuwa, 2021;Kelan & Wratil, 2018), i.e. willing and able to weaken gender-biased aspects of organisational culture and procedures (Gould et al., 2018;Jouber, 2022;Khushk et al., 2023). This is evidenced when female leaders are not anomalies (Miliopoulou & Kapareliotis, 2021) but part of a critical mass of women leaders (Kowalewska, 2020(Kowalewska, , 2021. While acknowledging the economic power they wield, the research stresses female leaders' ability to apply normative pressure for change (Gould et al., 2018;van Mensvoort et al., 2021). ...
Employer family policy tends to be conceived as employers’ response to economic pressures, with the relevance of normative factors given comparatively little weight. This study questions this status quo, examining the normative relevance of public childcare and female leadership to employer childcare. Logistic regression analyses are performed on data from the 2016 National Study of Employers (NSE), a representative study of private sector employers in the United States. The findings show that public childcare is relevant for those forms of employer childcare more plausibly explained as the result of employers’ normative as opposed to economic considerations. The findings further suggest that female leaders are highly relevant for employer childcare, but that this significance differs depending on whether the form of employer childcare is more likely of economic versus normative importance to employers. The study provides an empirical contribution in that it is the first to use representative data of the United States to examine the relevance of state-level public childcare and female leadership. Its theoretical contribution is to show that normative explanations for employer childcare provision are likely underestimated in U.S. employer family policy research.
... This is in line with authors (Cabeza et al., 2019;Joecks, 2020;Maida and Weber, 2022;Osi and Teng, 2021;Pucheta et al., 2021;Ricks, 2018) who point to cultural factors such as the importance of equal gender opportunities, promotion of women in the business environment and support for gender diversity in board positions. Authors (Afzali et al., 2021;Blommaert and Van den Brink, 2020;Chan et al., 2021;Chen and Houser, 2019;Haldar et al., 2020;Halliday et al., 2021;Halrynjo and Blair, 2021;Kirsch, 2022;Kowalewska, 2021;Mateos de Cabo et al, 2022;Mensi et al., 2021;Osi and Teng, 2021) that investigated the functioning of salient organizational factors such as board culture, practices, policies, orientation programs and codes of good governance. On policies, the authors (Brieger et al., 2019;Cabeza et al., 2019;Dewally et al., 2017;De Vita and Magliocco, 2018;Foster, 2017;Heller and Gabaldon, 2018;Huang et al., 2020;Kowalewska, 2020 andLewellyn and Muller, 2020;Maida and Weber, 2022;Martínez et al, 2020;Mateos de Cabo et al., 2019;Seierstad et al., 2017;Seierstad et al., 2021;Sharda, 2019;Thams et al., 2018;Wawryszuk, 2021) focused on mandatory quotas, voluntary quotas, regulations, and policies. ...
Throughout history, there has been an idea that women had to follow orders, which caused them to be kept in subordinate positions even after they entered the labor market; fortunately, during the last few decades, research focused on gender and female leadership has increased substantially. This has facilitated the visibility of women's potential in top positions in organizations around the world. It has been proven that the presence of women on boards of directors’ benefits organizations because it allows them to have a wider diversity of talent for business management. The present study aimed to analyze theoretical and empirical studies on the factors that facilitate women's access to board positions between 2017 and 2022. This systematic review was conducted based on the PRISMA statement strategy of articles in the Proquest, Ebsco, ScienceDirect and Scopus databases. Articles published between the indicated years were selected, in Spanish and English, using inclusion and exclusion criteria, and a subsequent critical analysis of the articles obtained. A total of 34 articles were included from which the corresponding results were extracted. The results show that there is a greater amount of research on the subject in European and North American countries, published almost entirely in English. And according to the analysis, the factors that facilitate women's access to board positions can be divided into political types, such as rules, regulations and quotas, cultural factors such as support for women, equal opportunities and gender equity, organizational factors such as organizational culture, policies, practices and training programs, and social factors such as media visibility, the presence of mentors and partner support. The research concludes that the most investigated factors were political, as these factors increase the number of women on boards in the short term; however, it’s also necessary to highlight the importance of a fusion with social, cultural, and organizational factors to achieve long-term improvement; as well as the commitment of all the agents that interact in the professional life of women. This paper will contribute to future scientific research on women's access to board positions.
... Ellingsaeter (2012) found an increase in women's share of management positions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, while positing that the role of work-family policy on segregation processes is somewhat conflicting. More recently, Kowalewska (2021) found limited evidence in support of that work-family policies undermine women's access to the top jobs across 22 industrialized countries. ...
This article analyzes the gender gap in wages and access to managerial positions among university graduates in 12 European countries and explores the capability of work-family balance policies to close these gaps. Using the REFLEX database, we apply the coarsened exact matching algorithm to construct a balanced sample of women and men with the same academic characteristics (field of study, internships, and academic achievement, among others). The analysis reveals that the academic program characteristics play a relevant role in labor market outcomes as the gender gaps diminish when controlling for academic features. We find that gender differences in hourly wages and access to top wages are smaller in countries with longer paid paternity leaves and larger enrollment rates of children aged 0-3 years in preschools. In contrast, work-family reconciliation policies have little effect on the constraints women face in accessing high-level positions that require strong commitment and availability.
... The high public-sector participation group also has narrower gender employment participation gaps than the lower segregation group, to which the Anglophone countries and France belong, while still displaying narrower gender pay gaps at tertiary education levels. True, women's managerial representation in the high public-sector participation cluster falls behind that of the lower segregation one; even so, women's share of board seats is higher in the former, reflecting more decisive legislation to correct for women's historic absence from the boardroom (Kowalewska, 2021). ...
An accepted framework for ‘gendering’ the analysis of welfare regimes compares countries by degrees of ‘defamilialization’ or how far their family policies support or undermine women’s employment participation. This article develops an alternative framework that explicitly spotlights women’s labour market outcomes rather than policies. Using hierarchical clustering on principal components, it groups 24 industrialised countries by their simultaneous performance across multiple gendered employment outcomes spanning segregation and inequalities in employment participation, intensity, and pay, with further differences by class. The three core ‘worlds’ of welfare (social-democratic, corporatist, liberal) each displays a distinctive pattern of gendered employment outcomes. Only France diverges from expectations, as large gender pay gaps across the educational divide – likely due to fragmented wage-bargaining – place it with Anglophone countries. Nevertheless, the outcome-based clustering fails to support the idea of a homogeneous Mediterranean grouping or a singular Eastern European cluster. Furthermore, results underscore the complexity and idiosyncrasy of gender inequality: while certain groups of countries are ‘better’ overall performers, all have their flaws. Even the Nordics fall behind on some measures of segregation, despite narrow participatory and pay gaps for lower and high-skilled groups. Accordingly, separately monitoring multiple measures of gender inequality, rather than relying on ‘headline’ indicators or gender equality indices, matters.
... The evidence indicates that they may be doing so to positive effect with regard to employer-provision of non-FSA childcare. However, it may also be true, or true instead, that women only make it to high executive level positions if dependable childcare is available (Kowalewska, 2021), which is more likely if employer-provided childcare is an option. ...
Persistent work-family conflict in the wake of heightened female labor force participation is one of the pressing social issues that has been carried over from the late 20 th into the early 21 st century. Insufficient childcare in particular has been an area of focus for policymakers across the OECD. Yet as efforts to increase public childcare and study its effects on various social outcomes have increased, employer-provided childcare has been overlooked. This is particularly true in the United States, where the context of a weak welfare states makes employer-provided family policies of particular relevance. This article picks up the employer-side of the work-family conflict debate and examines what factors help explain employer-provided childcare in the United States. It is the first to do so using a representative sample since 1997. Analysing employer data from the year 2016, the logistic regression results show that the size of the employer by number of employees, skills and female executives are the most relevant predictors of employer-provided childcare.
... This article contributes to scholarship in this field firstly through its application of the concept "welfare paradox" to the study of the adverse effects of welfare policies and their connection with cross-border inequalities resulting specifically from formal welfare provision. The "welfare paradox" concept was initially used to analyse the redistribution capacity of universalist welfare policies (Korpi & Palme, 1998), and more recently to assess the gender-equality impact of work-family reconciliation policies (Kowalewska, 2021). In this reading, we use the term "welfare paradox" to consider the impact of Spanish long-term care policies, based on cash transfers, on the demand for domestic migrant and care workers, as well as the conditioning labour factors that block these workers' access to basic social rights. ...
This article analyses the relationship between migration, care work, and welfare provision, highlighting the role of Latin American migrants in Spain as providers of formal and informal social protection on a transnational scale. It contributes to the debate on transnational social protection and transnational social inequalities from the perspective of welfare paradoxes and interpersonal pacts. Migrant women in Spain have become a resource for the provision of formal social protection through their employment as domestic care workers. Nevertheless, given that access to social rights in Spain depends on job stability and residency status, they have difficulties in accessing formal social protection themselves. This process constitutes a “welfare paradox,” based on the commodification and exclusion paradoxes, explained by structural factors such as the characteristics of the welfare regime (familiaristic model, with a tendency to hire domestic workers as caregivers into households), the migration regime (feminised and with a clear leaning towards Latin American women), and the economic landscape resulting from two systemic crises: the great recession of 2008 and the Covid‐19 pandemic. Interpersonal pacts, rooted in marriage/couple and intergenerational agreements, and their infringements, are analysed to explain the transnational and informal social protection strategies in the context of the “exclusion paradox” and the breach of the “welfare pact.” Our research draws on the exploitation of secondary data and multi‐sited, longitudinal fieldwork based on biographical interviews conducted with various members of transnational families in Spain and Ecuador (41 interviews).
... This article contributes to scholarship in this field firstly through its application of the concept "welfare paradox" to the study of the adverse effects of welfare policies and their connection with cross-border inequalities resulting specifically from formal welfare provision. The "welfare paradox" concept was initially used to analyse the redistribution capacity of universalist welfare policies (Korpi & Palme, 1998), and more recently to assess the gender-equality impact of work-family reconciliation policies (Kowalewska, 2021). In this reading, we use the term "welfare paradox" to consider the impact of Spanish long-term care policies, based on cash transfers, on the demand for domestic migrant and care workers, as well as the conditioning labour factors that block these workers' access to basic social rights. ...
This article analyses the relationship between migration, care work, and welfare provision, highlighting the role of Latin American migrants in Spain as providers of formal and informal social protection on a transnational scale. It contributes to the debate on transnational social protection and transnational social inequalities from the perspective of welfare paradoxes and interpersonal pacts. Migrant women in Spain have become a resource for the provision of formal social protection through their employment as domestic care workers. Nevertheless, given that access to social rights in Spain depends on job stability and residency status, they have difficulties in accessing formal social protection themselves. This process constitutes a “welfare paradox,” based on the commodification and exclusion paradoxes, explained by structural factors such as the characteristics of the welfare regime (familiaristic model, with a tendency to hire domestic workers as caregivers into households), the migration regime (feminised and with a clear leaning towards Latin American women), and the economic landscape resulting from two systemic crises: the great recession of 2008 and the Covid‐19 pandemic. Interpersonal pacts, rooted in marriage/couple and intergenerational agreements, and their infringements, are analysed to explain the transnational and informal social protection strategies in the context of the “exclusion paradox” and the breach of the “welfare pact.” Our research draws on the exploitation of secondary data and multi‐sited, longitudinal fieldwork based on biographical interviews conducted with various members of transnational families in Spain and Ecuador (41 interviews).
Notorious for its homogeneous hierarchies, the financial services industry needs, yet haemorrhages, talented women. This, in combination with severe underrepresentation of women in senior leadership roles and an unproportionally large gender pay gap, warrants scholarly attention. To summarize existing work and propose future impactful research directions, this paper provides a systematic review of the literature about women's careers in financial services. Our analysis of 150 articles published between 2000 and 2023 demonstrates the presence of persistent gender stereotyping and pervasive career disadvantages for women and mothers. We illustrate this within an input–process–output–solutions framework that can inform future research and policy formation. Governments have an important role in ensuring equal policies for all genders, regardless of parenting status. Firms need to establish fair policies that support the careers of all employees and embed these values throughout their organizations. Consistent attention to these can challenge the systemic gender inequality in the financial services industry and improve business performance.
