Women’s working hours

What is it about?

This study reports that the negative association between having young children at home and women’s working hours is stronger for women with traditional gender role attitudes compared to women with egalitarian attitudes. The gap in working hours between women with and without young children at home was smaller in countries in which the population holds egalitarian gender role attitudes and in countries with extensive public childcare support. Furthermore, it was found that the gap in employment hours between mothers with traditional or egalitarian attitudes was largest in countries with limited public childcare support.

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Why is it important?

The originality of this study lies in the combined (rather than separate) analysis of how countries’ social policies (childcare services) and countries’ attitudes (gender traditionalism) interact with individual gender role attitudes to shape cross-national variation in women’s working hours.