Gender Equality Levers at the State-Market Nexus:Bringing Organizations Back In

Prof Lynn Prince Cooke15 September 2016

EU Social Investment Strategy

Inspired by the Nordic model …‘Social investment involves strengthening

people’s current and future capacities. …. notably in terms of employment prospects or labour incomes…. to 'prepare' people to confront life's risks, rather than simply 'repairing' the consequences’ (European Commission, 2013)

Employment-focused (growth, knowledge economy)

Child-focused (human capital, reduced poverty)

Gendered issuesFigure 1 (Gendered) investment distribution over the life

course and generations (Kvist 2014)

EU objectives 2016-2019

Activation goal = 75% women and men

Is it realistic?

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20140

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90 Countries that started with low flfp

SpainItalyIrelandGreece

Countries with 1990 flp 40-49%

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20140

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

BelgiumLuxembourgNetherlandsHungary

Countries starting 50-59%

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20140

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

FrancePolandGermanySlovak RepublicLatviaPortugalSloveniaAustria

60-69%...

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20140

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Czech RepublicUnited KingdomSwitzerlandNorway

70% + in 1990…

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 20140

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

DenmarkEstoniaFinlandSweden

The Nordic gender wage gap x time

2000 2005 2010 20140

5

10

15

20

25

DenmarkLinear (Denmark)FinlandSwedenNorway

% g

ende

r w

age

gap

Er go, social investment approach does not result in gender economic equality

The Missing Link

• Stratification researchers have long-acknowledged that individual socio-economic attainment is embedded in structures:• Family• Organizations • Nation-states

• Initial growth in individual-level microdata privileged analyses of human capital

• Subsequent growth in comparative data highlighted how individual-level effects vary across nation-states• These differences were used to defend social investment

approach (i.e., Esping-Andersen et al. 2002)

The Missing Link: Organizations

• Structuralists reject the economic supposition that labor markets efficiently allocate wages according to skill and market demand as assumed by the human capital model

• Instead, organizations are the site of employment relations, wage-setting, as well as compliance with any national equality directives• wage inequalities result from local social relations

that allocate rewards within establishments (Avent-Holt and Tomaskovic-Devey 2014; Baron and Pfeffer 1994; Tilly 1998)

Gender Inequality Regimes

• Organizations’ gender inequality regimes reflect the surrounding society’s politics and culture (Acker 2006)• Yet Lazear and Shaw’s (2008) comparative study analysing linked

employee-employer data revealed significant and similar variation in wage inequalities across firms within divergent socio-political contexts

• Gender economic inequalities do not derive from women in the same job being paid less, but the sorting of women and men into different occupations (glass ceilings) and establishments (glass doors) (Javdani 2015; Petersen et al. 2011, 2014; Petersen & Morgan 1995)

• May reflect individual ‘choice’ given family constraints, but evidence that employers discriminate (Correll et al. 2007)

EU 2016-2019 strategy v.organizational sorting

Two (of five) Priorities equal pay for work of equal value equal economic independence for women and

men

EU 2016-2019 strategy v.organizational sorting

Two (of five) Priorities equal pay for work of equal value • Strategy for reducing pay gaps includes the only nod to

sorting with an objective of reducing gender inequalities in sectors and occupations

• The specific action plans, however, focus on increasing today’s and future women’s human capital to compete in male-dominated sectors (European Commission 2016: 25)

• Doing so will only frustrate women if they cannot obtain the jobs/rewards using these

EU 2016-2019 strategy v.organizational sorting

Two (of five) Priorities equal economic independence for women and

men • Action plans relating to employment focus on more

policy supports for parental employment • Mandel and Semyonov (2006) found that such policies

increased high-skilled women’s exclusion from lucrative private sector occupations as compared with women in countries with less or no policy support

De-gendering unpaid work?

• A further action plan is to encourage men to assume more unpaid work to reduce the gendered dimension of assumed family responsibilities

• Organizational ‘ideal worker’ models reward employees with no familial responsibilities (Acker 1990)

• Research on the “flexibility stigma” finds that employers penalize men, particularly professional men, who take advantage of such policies (Williams, Blair-Loy, and Berdahl 2013)

• Might account for the ‘stall’ in men’s domestic work across countries…

Men’s unpaid work x time (Kan et al. 2011)

Austra

lia

Canad

a UKUSA

France

German

y

Netherl

ands

Denmark

Finlan

d

Norway

Sweden

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1970s

Min

utes

per

day

Men’s unpaid work x time (Kan et al. 2011)

Austra

lia

Canad

a UKUSA

France

German

y

Netherl

ands

Denmark

Finlan

d

Norway

Sweden

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1970s1980s

Min

utes

per

day

Men’s unpaid work x time (Kan et al. 2011)

Austra

lia

Canad

a UKUSA

France

German

y

Netherl

ands

Denmark

Finlan

d

Norway

Sweden

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1970s1980s1990s

Min

utes

per

day

Men’s unpaid work x time (Kan et al. 2011)

Austra

lia

Canad

a UKUSA

France

German

y

Netherl

ands

Denmark

Finlan

d

Norway

Sweden

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1970s1980s1990s2000s

Min

utes

per

day

Conclusions & Next Steps Social investment strategies do not promote gender

equality because they focus too much on individual human capital and not enough on the organizational context that determines its rewards

Positive discrimination/quota policies directly address sorting, and are acceptable under 2006/54/EC Yet many countries reject positive discrimination as a

violation of men’s right to equal treatment (Cooke 2011) Growing availability of linked employee-employer panel

data offers an opportunity to understand the organizational factors that magnify or minimize gender and other group inequalities