Female participation to labour market, European Models of Welfare State and policies to conciliate family and work

Economic crisis has heavily struck women from employment side, being more exposed to it because of their horizontal and vertical segregation in labour market and because of their weaker contractual protection. The paper shows that a recovery of women’s participation to labour market depends, among other factors, also on the presence in Europe of different models of Welfare State (Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Mediterranean, Continental) which have very different institutional characteristics, in addition to different amount and quality of social expenditure which give feature to them. These models show a different attention to family’s policies (as well as different percentage of public expenditure in active and passive labour policies). A positive correlation between female activity rate, female employment rate, fertility rate and the amount of social expenditure for family has been found in several European countries (using Eurostat data referring to 2007) according to the different Welfare State models. State role is important not only to determinate the quantity of social expenditure for family, but also to decide its composition (predominance of money transfers to families or predominance of public services to persons or a balanced mix between the two). Also in this case several European models can be identified which can differently condition women’s participation to labour market and female employment, being more propulsive those based on the creation of services to persons rather than those which give monetary compensation. Women’s presence in labour market can also depend on the more or less intensive activism of Third Sector in the production of relational goods which can originate different European models of Welfare Mix and on the different degree of social capital devoted to family’s support present in European countries. Besides State and Third Sector, there are two other important actors which can not be forgotten in work-family conciliation policies: market (enterprises) and family. From company’s side new organizational solutions can be proposed and encouraged at company’s level (kindergarten, etc.); from family’s side European governments have introduced different measures concerning time: reducing time at work (part-time) and increasing spare time from work (parental leave), whose limits is to be used mostly by women for different reasons which are examined in the paper. Family-work conciliation policies are complex and systemic, so the level to be preferred should be the local because it allows a better possibility of concertation among public, private and non profit actors. Local Welfare systems family-oriented (alias presence of regional laws concerning family or conciliation, good practises, territorial bargaining with social components regarding family) become more and more important in this field. Also in this case a positive correlation between female employment rate of some of the most dynamic European regions from women’s labour market side and the presence of Local Welfare systems family-oriented has been found to test this hypothesis.