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Measuring Women’s Labour Market Integration: The Issue of Adequate Indicators

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Local Welfare Policy Making in European Cities

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 59))

Abstract

There is a broad debate in international comparative welfare state research about the ways in which welfare state policies influence the integration of women into labour markets. In comparative welfare state research the main labour market indicators are sometimes used without considering the possibilities that they offer for the evaluation of theoretical assumptions and their limitations.

The main question that this chapter seeks to answer is: how can different labour market indicators be used for different research questions related to women’s labour market integration? We analyse the possibilities and limitations of the main labour market indicators. Moreover, we argue that it is important to understand the processes and social phenomena that are connected with the main labour market indicators in order to apply these indicators in an adequate way. Finally, we show that it is possible to classify women’s labour markets on the basis of the differences in the ways in which the main indicators interact. We show how such an analysis can be conducted by the example of cross-national analysis of women’s labour markets in 11 European cities and countries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The EU-project “Impact of Local Welfare Systems on Female Labour Force Participation and Social Cohesion” (FLOWS) is a research project funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, 2011–2014. Prof. Per H. Jensen from Aalborg University chaired the project.

  2. 2.

    We do not include the issue of women’s working-time patterns in this chapter.

  3. 3.

    In contrast, full employment of women in the state socialist society of the former GDR was about 95 %, which was possible because only quite a small proportion of women of working age had the chance to study at a University (Pfau-Effinger and Smidt 2011).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, Institute for Sociology, University of Hamburg, Allende-Platz 1, D-20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Birgit Pfau-Effinger & Nicola Schwindt

Authors
  1. Birgit Pfau-Effinger
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  2. Nicola Schwindt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Birgit Pfau-Effinger .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Dagmar Kutsar

  2. Dept. of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland

    Marjo Kuronen

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Pfau-Effinger, B., Schwindt, N. (2015). Measuring Women’s Labour Market Integration: The Issue of Adequate Indicators. In: Kutsar, D., Kuronen, M. (eds) Local Welfare Policy Making in European Cities. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 59. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16163-1_2

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