Parenting, Employment and Gender Roles in Russia and Sweden

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Parenting, Employment and Gender Roles in Russia
and Sweden
Akvile Motiejunaite, Zhanna Kravchenko Baltic
and East European Graduate SchoolSouth Stockholm
University College SE-14189 Huddinge,
Sweden akvile.motiejunaite_at_sh.se zhanna.kravchenk
o_at_sh.se
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• Gender effects of family policy
• Womens decision to participate/or not on the
  labour market is shaped by
• institutional framework of social policy,
• social norms on redistribution of work/care
  duties.

Research question What are the patterns of
relations between a) family policy
arrangements b) normative gender relations
c) actual family practices?
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Sweden and Russia

• Similarities
• Wide participation of women in the labour market
• Female of the labour force (2004, The World
  Bank data)
• Russian Federation 49
• Sweden 47
• Explicit family policy aimed at conciliation of
  waged work and care duties

• and Differences
• Sustainable democratic development in Sweden
• Drastic transformation of social, political,
  economic order in Russia during the 1990s

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Questions

• Do similarities in the approach and the
  instruments of family policy result in similar
  socio-economic practices of families?
• How does the change in vector of economic and
  political system influence the transformation of
  gender-role attitudes?

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Gender contract

• is a compromise made about the gender division
  of labour, at work, and by implication, at home
  (Gottfried 2000 253)

• official contract
• everyday contract
• ideal contract

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Gender contracts in the worlds of welfareHow
the principles of structuring and design of
policies allow both women and men access to
public benefits and services?
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Data

• documents and statistical indicators related to
  the public authoritys policy as regards creation
  of conditions for women engaging in wage labour
  (and less thoroughly, for encouraging men to
  participate in care) ? official contract
• survey data, obtained from the International
  Social Survey Programme (ISSP) on Family and
  Changing Gender Roles, modules II and III (for
  the years 1994 and 2002) ? ideal and everyday
  contracts

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The Official Contract

• The weak male-breadwinner model
• The state-carer model?
• Woman a worker and a carer
• Transformation of the official contract during
  1994-2002
• Sweden no drastic changes in the model
• Russia towards the modified male-breadwinner
  model

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The Ideal Contract

• Factor analysis
• Scale Traditional Male Breadwinner Model (TMBM)
• All in all, family life suffers when the woman
  has a full-time job.
• A pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or
  her mother works.
• A mans job is to earn money a womans job is to
  look after the home and family.
• A job is all right, but what most women really
  want is a home and children.
• Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as
  working for pay.

2002
1994
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Determinants of support for TMBM (standard errors
within parentheses)
Notes significant at 0.05 level,
significant at 0.01 level.
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The Ideal vs. the Everyday Contract

• Ideal Do you think that women should work
  outside the home full-time, part-time or not at
  all under these circumstances?
• Everyday Did you work outside the home
  full-time, part-time, or not at all...? OR What
  about your spouse/partner at that time - did he
  or she work outside the home full-time,
  part-time, or not at all...?
• After marrying and before there are children.
• When there is a child under school age.
• After the youngest child starts school.
• After the children leave home.

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Pearson Correlation Coefficients between the
ideal and everyday contract
Notes significant at 0.05 level,
significant at 0.01 level. Pair-wise deletion
of missing values, N varies.
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Conclusions

• Official contract the dual-earner/state
  carer family model, but Sweden - emphasis on
  dual-caring and flexible work arrangements for
  women.
• Ideal contract
• Sweden strong support for liberal family roles
  increased, closer to official
• Russia uniform agreement to TMBM decreased,
  contradicts to official
• Everyday contract more consistent with ideal
  and official in Sweden, huge discrepancies in
  Russia ? no choice