Family and gender
A Portrait of the Family in Europe
Dimiter Philipov
This project is commissioned by the Council of Europe, and the prepared paper is a background document for the European Population Conference organized in April 2005 by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The study makes use of population census data gathered by Eurostat and presents a statistical description of the family in a large number of European countries.
Gender Issues: Results from the PPA2 surveys
Dimiter Philipov
This project is a part of the institute's involvement in the international project "DIALOG - Population Policy Acceptance Study - The Viewpoint of Citizens and Policy Actors Regarding the Management of Population Change", supported by the European Union's Fifth Framework Program. VID is responsible for Workpackage 5, "Gender issues". The PPA2 survey data describe attitudes towards gender issues linked primarily to work and the family with the use of a special module. The study focuses on international comparisons. The findings suggest the existence of diversity among the countries with respect to gender-related attitudes. Attitudes that favor traditional gender roles are more frequent in countries in Central and Eastern as well as in Southern Europe. Western countries are also diverse, for example Austria and Germany are relatively more traditional as compared to the Netherlands. In general women have a more modern orientation as compared to men.
Gender Differences in Family Formation
Maria Winkler-Dworak, Laurent Toulemon (Ined)
Numerous studies have shown that educational attainment and labour force status have a strong impact on the timing of family formation for both men and women. The effects of educational level, enrolment in an educational setting and employment seem to be different for men and women. The aim of this project is to investigate how gender-specific differences in family formation change over time, and in particular whether these differences have vanished in recent years. We use a large-scale survey (more than 240,000 men and women born after 1940) conducted within the French 1999 census and apply event history techniques. The sample size allows us to test our hypotheses with more sophisticated models that cover several interactions. In particular, we combine the information on education and work and incorporate additionally the time to and since important role changes, i.e., for the individuals participating in education we distinguish whether they are far from graduation or whether they are in their final year. For those who have left school, but are not active on the labour market, we take into account the time since graduation, while for those working we incorporate the time since entry into the labour market in order to model their work experience. Our data fully support the convergence hypothesis for men and women with regard to the effects caused by educational attainment. Regarding the effects of working status (working/not working) on family formation, we find differences between entry into first union and parenthood. While being in the labour force now speeds up union formation among women, a finding that is similar to men, it still delays entry into parenthood for women, but not for men. The convergence hypothesis is only partly relevant for the delaying effects of their enrolment status on entry into first union and parenthood. Finally, the impact of work experience on first union and first parenthood has developed similarly over time for both men and women. In a further step, we complement our investigations by employing sequencing analysis in order to get a more holistic view on the transition to adulthood. Our first results indicate still persisting differences in the transition to adulthood between men and women.
Publications:
- Winkler-Dworak, M. and Toulemon, L. 2007. Gender Differences in the Transition to Adulthood: Is There Convergence over the Recent Periods? European Journal of Population 23 (3–4).
Interrelationships between education and first births in Western European countries
Dimiter Philipov
This research project studies the interaction between family formation (first birth) and completion of education. It combines micro- and macro-level aspects of the interrelationship. At the micro level use is made of the FFS data. At the macro level the interactions are influenced by the welfare regime in a country. The findings show that these life events are less interdependent in the Scandinavian countries, known for their developed social policies.