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Gender, crisis and the welfare state: Female labor market outcomes across OECD countries

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The 2008 global economic crisis has had profound social and economic consequences across states. In addition to cross-national social and economic disparities, the crisis generated increased domestic divisions between labor market insider and outsider groups. This article analyzes the impact of the global economic crisis on female workers across advanced welfare states. While considerable attention has been given to the impact of the Great Recession on financial markets and employment sectors, we argue that the crisis had an important gendered effect across advanced capitalist states that remains significantly underexplored. In particular, we examine the divergent ways in which distinct welfare systems and their cultural underpinnings shape labor market access and levels of social protection for women. In this endeavor, we integrate literature on welfare systems, feminist political economy and financial crisis to examine the relationship between social protection structures, cultural legacies and gender inequalities – which manifests most strongly during times of economic crisis. Our hierarchical panel model of 28 countries across 7 years is supplemented by cultural and survey data. Our findings not only give an important analysis of an understudied aspect of the global economic crisis, but also provide policy implications for more gender-conscious crisis management responses going forward.

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Notes

  1. In Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Esping-Andersen (1990) uses the categories Liberal, Corporatist–Statist and Social Democratic to differentiate welfare types. We have added additional typologies for Southern and Eastern European welfare systems that constitute separate distinct categories.

  2. A flexible labor market is one with few regulations governing a firm’s ability to set wages, hire and fire employees, and set work hours. This allows employees easier access to the workforce, although offers lower levels of employment protection.

  3. The modern Continental welfare state owes much of its origins to nineteenth-century German policies and institutions. This welfare system legacy is still prominent in the politics and policies of many states across Europe, including those in Eastern and Southern Europe.

  4. Dualization refers to the separation between labor market insiders, typically full-time core workers, who enjoy stable and protected employment as well as greater access to social provisions and outsider groups, such as women, youth, part-time workers and low-skilled laborers, who do not (Rueda, 2007, 2014; Häusermann and Palier, 2008).

  5. For Southern European states, this development occurred during the 1970s and 1980s, while Eastern European states began this process in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  6. Whereas Generosity Scores offers general comparative data for national welfare systems, they do not measure potential sources of dualization in social benefit distribution.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, 02115, MA, USA

    Sidita Kushi & Ian P McManus

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  1. Sidita Kushi
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Kushi, S., McManus, I. Gender, crisis and the welfare state: Female labor market outcomes across OECD countries. Comp Eur Polit 16, 434–463 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2016.21

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