Women's and men's career interruptions in Europe: the role of social policies

How do countries differ in the type and level of women’s and men’s labour-market participation around parenthood? What are the models of interruptions prevalent? What is their impact on subsequent participation and wages? How does this impact depend on duration, type and “gender” of interruptions? How such impact is connected to the different social policies offered? Drawing on existing comparative datasets and offering a synthesis of the main “facts” and arguments provided so far in the literature, this paper addresses these questions by looking both at women and men and at similarities and differences within enlarged Europe. It shows that there is clearly a cost to employment discontinuities, either for unemployment or family-care, in terms of current and future participation, career opportunities, and wages, and these costs are institutionally and culturally embedded. Costs for parenthood, which are still the highest and the most “gendered”, are minimal in countries that spend more on families and, within such investment, that spend more on childcare services than on cash transfers. Moreover, they are lowest in countries where rights to leaves are individual-based, where fathers have paternity leaves or a specific reserved quota in the parental leaves, where wage compensation is high throughout the period, and where length is overall relatively short.