Gender, family and employment in comparative perspective: the realities and representations of rqual rpportunities in Britain and France

In this paper, we will explore how contrasting national discourses relating to women, and gender equality have been incorporated into and reflected in national policies. In the first section, we will outline the recent history of EU equal opportunities policy, in which positive action has been replaced by a policy of 'mainstreaming'. Second, we will describe the evolution of policies towards women and equal opportunities in Britain and France. It will be argued that whereas some degree of positive action for women has been accepted in Britain, this policy is somewhat alien to French thinking about equality - although pro-natalist French policies have resulted in favourable conditions for employed mothers in France. In the third section, we will present some attitudinal evidence, drawn from national surveys, which would appear to reflect the national policy differences we have identified in respect of the 'equality agenda'. In the fourth section, we will draw upon biographical interviews carried out with men and women in British and French banks in order to illustrate the impact of these cross-national differences within organizations and on individual lives. We demonstrate that positive action gender equality policies have made an important impact in British banks, while overt gender exclusionary practices still persist in the French banks studied. In the conclusion, we reflect on the European policy implications of our findings.

Paid employment and the changing system of gender relations: a cross-national comparison

Equality with men in the world of paid work has been a major feminist objective. Given that work in the `public' sphere has historically been shaped on the assumption that the `worker' will be male, then national employment systems which facilitate masculine employment patterns (i.e. full-time work and unbroken employment careers) might be expected to be more likely to generate gender equality. This paper compares women's employment in France (where `masculine' careers for women are common) and Britain (where part-time work and broken employment careers are more likely) at the macro, meso (occupational), and micro (individual) levels. The two occupations studied are finance and pharmacy. The evidence presented suggests that there are considerable similarities between women in the two countries at the occupational and individual level, despite national variations. In the light of this evidence, structural and individual explanations of women's employment behaviour are examined, and the continuing significance of structural constraint on the patterning of gender relations is emphasised.

Gender stereotypes of personality : universal and accurate ?

Numerous studies have documented subtle but consistent sex differences in self-reports and observer-ratings of five-factor personality traits, and such effects were found to show well- defined developmental trajectories and remarkable similarity across nations. In contrast, very little is known about perceived gender differences in five-factor traits in spite of their potential implications for gender biases at the interpersonal and societal level. In particular, it is not clear how perceived gender differences in five-factor personality vary across age groups and national contexts and to what extent they accurately reflect assessed sex differences in personality. To address these questions, we analyzed responses from 3,323 individuals across 26 nations (mean age = 22.3 years, 31% male) who were asked to rate the five-factor personality traits of typical men or women in three age groups (adolescent, adult, and older adult) in their respective nations. Raters perceived women as slightly higher in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness as well as some aspects of extraversion and neuroticism. Perceived gender differences were fairly consistent across nations and target age groups and mapped closely onto assessed sex differences in self- and observer-rated personality. Associations between the average size of perceived gender differences and national variations in sociodemographic characteristics, value systems, or gender equality did not reach statistical significance. Findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of gender stereotypes of personality and suggest that perceptions of actual sex differences may play a more important role than culturally based gender roles and socialization processes.

A model of gender prejudice, power, and discrimination: How hierarchy-enhancing factors predominate over hierarchy-attenuating factors

Gender inequalities remain an issue in our society and particularly in the workplace. Several factors can explain this gender difference in top-level managerial positions such as career ambitions but also biases against women. In our chapter, we propose a model explaining why gender inequalities and particularly discrimination against women is still present in our societies despite social norms and existing legislation on gender equality. To this purpose, we review research on discrimination through two different approaches, (a) a prejudice approach through the justification-suppression model developed by Crandall and Eshleman (2003) and (b) a power approach through the social dominance theory (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In our work, we integrate these two approaches and propose a model of gender prejudice, power and discrimination. The integration of these two approaches contributes to a better understanding of how discrimination against women is formed and maintained over time.

From breaking the rule to making the rules : the adoption, entrenchment and diffusion of gender quotas in France

Once a country allergic to any type of preferential treatment or quota measure for women, France has become a country that applies gender quotas to regulate women's presence and representation in politics, the business sector, public bodies, public administration, and even some civil society organizations. While research has concentrated on the adoption of electoral gender quotas in many countries and their international diffusion, few studies focus on explaining the successful diffusion of gender quotas from politics to other domains in the same country. This paper proposes to fill this gap by studying the particularly puzzling case of a country that at one point strongly opposed the adoption of gender quotas in politics, but, in less than a decade, transformed into one of the few countries applying gender quotas across several policy domains. This paper argues that the legal entrenchment of the parity principle, the institutionalization of parity in several successive women's policy agencies, and key players in these newly created agencies are mainly responsible for this unexpected development. The diffusion of gender quotas in France thus offers an illuminating example of under which conditions women's policy agencies can act autonomously to diffuse and impose a new tool for gender equality

Exploring women's academic careers in cross-national perspective: lessons for equal epportunity eolicies

Purpose - In recent years, several countries and/or higher education institutions have adopted equal opportunity policies to promote women's access to the upper levels of the academic career structure. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is no universal solution to the glass ceiling that women face within academia. Insofar as the feminisation process evolves according to a variety of models, according to national and occupational context, the solutions adopted in one context may prove to be ineffective elsewhere. Design/methodology/approach - Analysis of the different models of occupational feminisation is based on a secondary analysis of the sociological literature on the subject, combined with recent data on women's access to academic positions in France and Germany. Findings - Although there are similarities in the structure of the academic labour market across countries and in the rate of feminisation of the most prestigious academic positions, the precise mechanisms through which women gain access to an academic career vary significantly from one national context to another. This cross-national variation would tend to suggest that there will also be variation when it comes to defining the most effective policy measures for increasing women's access to the upper echelons of the academic hierarchy. Indeed, different models of gender equality in academia may lead to very different results with regard to existing gender relations. Originality/value - The paper uses the available sociological literature on the feminisation process to examine how different measures adopted to promote women's access to the highest echelons of the academic career structure may have different effects on the reproduction and/or transformation of the dominant sex/gender system.

Preface to the Rostock Debate on Demographic Change

The first Rostock Debate on Demographic Change, which took place on February 21, 2006, centered on the following question: Should governments in Europe push much more aggressively for gender equality to raise fertility? The four debaters were Laurent Toulemon from the Institut National d'Etudes Demograhiques (France), Dimiter Philipov from the Vienna Institute of Demography (Austria), Livia Olah from Stockholm University (Sweden), and Gerda Neyer from the Max Planck Institute (Germany).

Fertility discourse in parental leave policies' media coverage : a frame analysis of French-speaking Swiss press articles from 1999 to 2009

This paper analyses the media coverage of parental leave policies (parental and paternity leaves) in Swiss French-speaking press articles from 1999 to 2009. Switzerland is one of the rare European countries which has no statutory parental or paternity leave. The aim is to describe the mediatisation of these policies and to analyse the arguments in favour and against their implementation. We investigate the status of a fertility frame - the mobilisation of discourse relating to fertility issues - among the various arguments used to justify or reject parental leave policies. We proceed with a content analysis of 579 press articles, as well as a frame analysis on a subset in which parental leave policies are the central theme (N=206). Results show that paternity leave is the predominant public issue addressed in the dataset. A mediatisation peak was reached in 2007, following an initiative of a member of the Federal executive to implement a short paternity leave. Parental leave policies are predominantly represented in a positive light. The main positive frame is economic, in which leaves are represented as serving the interests of companies. Involved fatherhood and gender equality are also frequently mentioned as positive frames. The fertility frame is only moderately used in articles covering Swiss news on paternity leaves. Conversely, the fertility frame is largely mobilised in articles covering parental leave in other countries. We discuss some interpretations of this discrepancy and suggest future avenues of research on parental leave policies in Switzerland.

The gendering of excellence through quality criteria: the case of the SNSF Professorships in Switzerland

The Swiss National Science Foundation Professorships Programme is presented as a scientific programme that aims to promote outstanding young scholars to professorial positions. Academic excellence is presented as the main selection criterion. The emphasis put on the research portfolio and on the age of the candidates means that the beneficiaries of these professorships put forward an image of excellence that is more embedded in data-based sciences than in the humanities and social sciences, thus strengthening the domination of a sector scientific activity essentially occupied by men over the sector that has opened up more widely to women. This paper aims to deconstruct the criteria of academic excellence as they appear in this programme and to show that what seem quality criteria are in fact inspired by a specific androcentric model. These biases tend to undermine the gender equality aims of the programme.

The emergence of parental and paternity leaves in Switzerland : a challenge to gendered representations and practices of parenthood?

The thesis addresses the issue of parenthood and gender equality in Switzerland through the emergence of parental leave policies. This is an original and relevant research topic, as Switzerland is one of the few industrialized countries that have not yet implemented a parental or paternity leave. I first describe the emergence of parental leave policies in the last ten to fifteen years in the political, media, and labor-market spheres. Secondly, adopting a gender and discursive theoretical approach, I analyze whether and to what extent this emergence challenged gendered representations and practices of parenthood. The multilevel and mixed-methods research design implies analyzing various data sets such as parliamentary interventions (N=23J and newspaper articles (N=579) on parental leave policies. A case study of a public administration which implemented a one-month paid paternity leave draws on register data of leave recipients (N=95) and in-depth interviews with fathers and managers (n=30). Results show that parental leave policies, especially in recent years, have been increasingly problematized in the three social spheres considered, as a result of political and institutional events. While there is a struggle over the definition of the legitimate leave type to implement [parental or paternity leave) in the political sphere, paternity leave has precedence in the media and labor-market spheres. Overall, this emergence contributes to making fatherhood visible in the public sphere, challenging albeit in a limited way gendered representations and practices of parenthood. Along with representations of involved fatherhood and change in gender relations, different roles and responsibilities are attributed to mothers and fathers, the latter being often defined as secondary, temporary and optional parents. Finally, I identify a common trend, namely the increasing importance of the economic aspects of parental leave policies with the consequence of sidelining their gender-equality potential. The dissertation contributes to the literature which analyzes the interconnections between the macro-, the meso- and the micro-levels of society in the constitution of gender relations and parenthood. It also provides useful tools for the analysis of the politics of parental leave policies in Switzerland and their effects for gender equality. - Cette thèse traite de la parentalité et de l'égalité de genre en Suisse à travers l'émergence des congés parentaux. Ce sujet de recherche est original et pertinent puisque la Suisse est à ce jour un des seuls pays industrialisés à ne pas avoir adopté de droit au congé parental ou paternité. Cette recherche décrit l'émergence des congés parentaux au cours des 10 à 15 dernières années dans les sphères politique, médiatique et du marché de l'emploi en Suisse. En combinant perspective de genre et analyse de discours, elle examine dans quelle mesure cette émergence remet en question les représentations et pratiques genrées de parentalité. Des méthodes de recherche mixtes sont employées pour analyser des interventions parlementaires (N=23) et des articles de presse (N=579) sur les congés parentaux. L'étude de cas d une entreprise publique qui a adopté un congé paternité payé d'un mois s'appuie sur des données de registre (N=95) et des entretiens semi-structurés avec des pères et des cadres (n=30). Les résultats indiquent que dans les trois sphères considérées, les congés parentaux ont reçu une attention croissante au cours de ces dernières années, en lien avec des événements politiques et institutionnels. Alors que dans la sphère politique il n'y a pas de consensus quant au type de congé considéré comme légitime (congé parental ou paternité), dans les sphères médiatique et du marché de l'emploi le congé paternité semble l'emporter. Dans l'ensemble, l'émergence des congés parentaux contribue à rendre la paternité plus visible dans l'espace public, remettant en question-bien que d'une manière limitée-les représentations genrées de la parentalité. En effet, d'une part l'image de pères impliqués et de rapports de genre plus égalitaires au sein de la famille est diffusée. D'autre part, mères et pères continuent à être associés à des rôles différents, les pères étant définis comme des parents secondaires et temporaires. Finalement, l'analyse révèle une tendance générale, soit l'importance croissante accordée aux aspects économiques des congés parentaux, avec pour conséquence la mise à l'écart de leur potentiel pour l'égalité de genre. Cette thèse contribue à la recherche sur les liens entre les niveaux macro- meso- et microsociaux dans la constitution des rapports de genre et de la parentalité. Elle propose également des outils pour analyser les politiques de congés parentaux en Suisse et leurs implications pour l'égalité de genre.

Validation de la version française du questionnaire I7 d'impulsivité. Influence de la personnalité, du sexe et de la religion = Validation of the french version of the eysenck's impulsiveness questionnaire (I7). Influence of personality, gender, and religion

L'objectif de cette étude est de vérifier la validité interne de la version française du questionnaire d'impulsivité d'Eysenck (I7), traduite par Dupont et al., sur un échantillon d'étudiants suisses (n = 220). Dans leur questionnaire, Eysenck et Eysenck proposent trois échelles : les deux premières évaluant deux composantes distinctes de l'impulsivité (l'Impulsivité caractérisant les individus qui agissent sans penser, sans être conscients des risques associés à leurs actions, et la Recherche d'aventure caractérisant les individus qui agissent en étant conscients, et en tenant compte des risques associés à leurs actions), et la troisième servant de « distracteur » (l'Empathie caractérisant les individus qui ont la faculté de s'identifier à l'autre). La structure à trois facteurs de l'instrument a été confirmée par notre analyse factorielle en composantes principales. La solution factorielle retenue n'explique toutefois qu'une faible proportion de la variance (21.9 %). L'homogénéité interne des échelles, mesurée à l'aide d'alphas de Cronbach, est acceptable pour l'échelle d'Impulsivité (.78) et de Recherche d'aventure (.71), mais elle est, en revanche, faible pour l'échelle d'Empathie (.62). Les échelles de l'I7 d'Eysenck entretiennent des corrélations cohérentes avec les cinq grandes dimensions de la personnalité mesurées par le NEO PI-R. L'Impulsivité est associée négativement à la dimension Conscience (r = - .32), alors que la Recherche d'aventures est associée positivement à la dimension Extraversion (r = .33). Le sexe a un impact sur les échelles Recherche d'aventure et Empathie. Les qualités métrologiques de la version française du questionnaire d'impulsivité d'Eysenck (I7) sont satisfaisantes, mais l'estimation d'autres indices de validité, comme la fidélité test-retest et la validité convergente, devrait être réalisée.

The joint influence of gender and amount of smoking on weight gain one year after smoking cessation.

Weight gain is often associated with smoking cessation and may discourage smokers from quitting. This study estimated the weight gained one year after smoking cessation and examined the risk factors associated with weight gain in order to identify socio-demographic groups at higher risk of increased weight after quitting. We analyzed data from 750 adults in two randomized controlled studies that included smokers motivated to quit and found a gradient in weight gain according to the actual duration of abstinence during follow-up. Subjects who were abstinent for at least 40 weeks gained 4.6 kg (SD = 3.8) on average, compared to 1.2 kg (SD = 2.6) for those who were abstinent less than 20 weeks during the 1-year follow-up. Considering the duration of abstinence as an exposure variable, we found an age effect and a significant interaction between sex and the amount of smoking before quitting: younger subjects gained more weight than older subjects; among light smokers, men gained more weight on average than women one year after quitting, while the opposite was observed among heavy smokers. Young women smoking heavily at baseline had the highest risk of weight gain after quitting.

Santé et besoins en soins des personnes âgées: différences liées au genre [Health status and care giving needs in the elderly: gender related differences].

The health status and need for care differ depending on the gender. The most notable differences are life expectancy, life expectancy in good health and the prevalence of geriatric syndromes or chronic illnesses. Some social health determinants (social isolation or financial precariousness) seem to act as risk factors for vulnerability, mostly amongst old or very old women. Through some examples of differences between men and women in terms of health and caregiving needs, this article tries to heighten the awareness of health professionals to a gender based approach of the elderly patient in order to promote the best possible equity in healthcare.