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Rethinking comparative childcare policy analysis. Example of Central and Eastern Europe
Comparative research routinely employs a small number of indicators to compare family policies across countries. In these studies, government expenditure, participation of children in public childcare or length of parental leave are...
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Comparative research routinely employs a small number of indicators to compare family policies across countries. In these studies, government expenditure, participation of children in public childcare or length of parental leave are internationally recognised policy indicators. However, they have been subject of academic controversy and are less adequate predictors of gendered policy incentives. This paper, therefore, theoretically and empirically explores and discusses how varieties of state de-familialism could be more fully captured in a crosscountry perspective. It proposes a composite indicator for use in gendered analysis of policy incentives, one that comprises the most salient features of national policies on leave and childcare services versus some combination of policy delivery and use. Thereby, it pays explicit attention to the methodological challenges and decisions that concern case selection, concept formation, the role of counterfactuals, establishing of measurement validity, and multi-method design. Finally, the paper discusses the opportunities for future research that such approach opens up. It empirically explores its applicability on Central and Eastern EU member states-an attempt which has gained little methodologically substantiated attention so far. Going beyond the Western welfare states it demonstrates its functionality and shows how these countries could be integrated in the corpus of comparative welfare state research.
by
Jana Javornik
Comparative Welfare Systems
Socialni razgledi 2006
by
Jana Javornik
Social Overview 2006
by
Jana Javornik
Javornik, J. (2014). Measuring state de-familialism: Contesting post-socialist exceptionalism
This article offers a methodology to reveal the latent constructs which underlie policies on parental leave and childcare services. It is constructed to uncover the state assumptions about social organisation of childcare and gender roles...
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This article offers a methodology to reveal the latent constructs which underlie policies on parental leave and childcare services. It is constructed to uncover the state assumptions about social organisation of childcare and gender roles in a country-comparative perspective. Legal regulations are central to this analysis, and combinations of policy components take centre stage. An index of state de-familialism is proposed and its analytical potential tested on eight post-socialist EU states. Grounded in Leitner’s (2003) conceptualisation of familialism, it gauges three policy types: (1) Slovenian and Lithuanian supported defamilialism incentivises women’s continuous employment and active fatherhood, (2) explicit familialism in Hungary, Czech Republic, and Estonia supports familial childcare and reinforces gendered parenting, and (3) implicit familialism in Poland, Slovakia, and Latvia leaves parents without public support. These groups share core characteristics with developed welfare-state regimes. This methodology has the potential to discredit claims of post-socialist exceptionalism and allows researchers to test new hypotheses.
by
Jana Javornik
Comparative Social Policy
Childcare policy
Assessment and Measurement
Hanžek, M., Javornik, J., Tršelič, A. (2000) Spolna neenakost v nekaterih tranzicijskih družbah
Matjaae Hanaeek, univ. dipl. sociolog, Urad R Slovenije za makroekonomske analize in razvoj, Ljubljana; Jana Javornik, univ. dipl. sociologinja, πtudentka podiplomskega πtudija na Fakulteti za druaebene vede Univerze v Ljubljani; Ana...
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Matjaae Hanaeek, univ. dipl. sociolog, Urad R Slovenije za makroekonomske analize in razvoj, Ljubljana; Jana Javornik, univ. dipl. sociologinja, πtudentka podiplomskega πtudija na Fakulteti za druaebene vede Univerze v Ljubljani; Ana TrπeliË, mag. ekonomije, Urad R Slovenije za makroekonomske analize in razvoj, Ljubljana. POVZETEK Kljub napovedim nekaterih razvojnih teoretikov o zmanjπevanju razlik med ljudmi in narodi, se sodobni svet vse bolj sooËa z blaginjo ljudi na eni strani, ki jo spremlja revπËina vse veËjega πtevila ljudi na drugi. Kljub napredku na podroËju socialnega in ekonomskega razvoja (veËja pismenost, veËja stopnja vkljuËenosti v izobraaeevanje, daljπanje priËakovane dolaeine aeivljenja, itd.), demokratiËnih institucij in veËjega spoπtovanja Ëlovekovih pravic, se bolj kot prej veËa deleae ljudi (posebej mladih in aeensk), ki trpijo zaradi πtevilnih pomanjkanj. Vedno bolj naraπËa prepad med bogatimi in revnimi ljudmi, med razvitimi in manj razvitimi draeavami. »eprav globalizacija poveËuje skupno svetovno bogastvo, postaja vrsta draeav vedno bolj revnih, saj ima veË kot 80 draeav manjπi dohodek, kot ga je imela pred desetletjem ali dvema. Leta 1995 so pri OZN, poleg dotedaj aee znanega HDI, predstavili dva nova indeksa, in sicer GDI in GEM. Medtem ko GDI kaaee πirjenje osnovnih Ëloveπkih virov (zdravja, izobrazbe ter dohodka) in s tem aeivljenjske pogoje za oba spola, pa nam GEM kaaee, ali imajo aeenske aktivno vlogo v gospodarskem in politiËnem aeivljenju. Oba indeksa sestojita iz sledeËih sestavin: deleaea aeensk na vodstvenih in vodilnih poloaeajih, deleaea aeensk v parlamentu in deleaea dohodka aeensk. Po indeksu Ëlovekovega razvoja (HDI) se med tranzicijskimi draeavami najviπje uvrsti Slovenija (na 28. mesto), sledijo ji, »eπka, Slovaπka in Poljska. Po izraËunih ZMAR znaπa vrednost HDI 0,864, z vrednostjo GDI, ki se od HDI razlikuje za 0,001, pa se uvrπËamo na 26. mesto. Vrednosti GDI in HDI sta za Slovenijo skoraj enaki, kar ni sploπna znaËilnost drugih draeav. Rezultat je posledica visoke stopnje vkljuËenosti aeensk v vse tri ravni izobraaeevanja, ter relativno visokega deleaea dohodkov aeensk v primerjavi z moπkimi. Vrednost indeksa GEM znaπa za Slovenijo 0,486, kar nas uvrπËa na 42. mesto med 102 izbranima draeavama. Kazalca, ki Sloveniji zniaeujeta vrednost GEM, sta deleaea aeensk v parlamentu in na vodstvenih in vodilnih poloaeajih, zviπuje pa ga deleae BDP na prebivalca po kupni moËi, ki ga prejme aeenska in je med tranzicijskimi draeavami najviπji (9,137 USD). Ker neenakost po spolu obstaja v vsaki draeavi, sta vrednosti GDI in GEM praviloma niaeji od vrednosti HDI, ne pa nujno tudi uvrstitev draeave.
by
Jana Javornik
Javornik, J. (2014). L’adieu au modèle de l’homme soutien de famille. Le présent post-socialiste à la lumière du passé socialiste
Le socialisme d’État a façonné l’héritage institutionnel des États membres de l’Union européenne post-socialistes. Il a non seulement permis à l’emploi des femmes de faire un bond important, mais aussi fait largement évoluer le rôle de...
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Le socialisme d’État a façonné l’héritage institutionnel des États membres de l’Union européenne post-socialistes. Il a non seulement permis à l’emploi des femmes de faire un bond important, mais aussi fait largement évoluer le rôle de l’État dans la famille. La recherche sur les régimes d’État-providence a donc tendance à traiter les pays post-socialistes comme un ensemble, unique et homogène. Cet article s’efforce de proposer une vision plus nuancée en analysant le passé socialiste de ces pays. Il montre que ces pays avaient adopté des modèles de socialisme distincts, entérinant et légitimant des politiques familiales et une répartition des rôles entre les genres différentes. Tous ne sont pas sortis de l’ère du socialisme d’État avec le même héritage ni avec la même expérience collective de l’organisation sociale de l’accueil des enfants et de l’emploi des femmes. Cette contribution invite par conséquent à poursuivre le débat sur « l’héritage socialiste commun » et sur le régime de protection sociale post-socialiste distinct.
by
Jana Javornik
Female Employment
A childcare system fit for the future?
Following Labour's significant reforms to childcare policy, under the Coalition there has been a combination of gains and losses for parents, with the implications of some impending changes not yet fully known. Ostensibly, more free...
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Following Labour's significant reforms to childcare policy, under the Coalition there has been a combination of gains and losses for parents, with the implications of some impending changes not yet fully known.
Ostensibly, more free childcare and early education (ECEC) offers an appealing solution and take-up of the universal entitlement is high. However, this demand-priming approach and its funding streams are too complex, inefficient and unsustainable. These has led to a shortage of supply of both pre-school and school-age care (with critically low provision for disabled children and those in rural areas), mismatch between service and work hours. The key failings of UK childcare policy are its prohibitively high costs (second highest in the OECD), equivalent to a regressive tax on mothers’ labour supply, reducing financial returns from their employment and increasing their reservation wage, and the linking of funding to parents being in paid work; these not only limit families’ choice and force parents to craft their own solutions, but also leave many families disadvantaged. It has been well established that the economic and social conditions of childhood frame the possibilities in later life and we argue that strategically investing in universal quality childcare will yield significant returns.
by
Jana Javornik
and
+1
Jo Ingold
Family policy
Childcare policy
A childcare system fit for the future?’
Following Labour's significant reforms to childcare policy, under the Coalition there has been a combination of gains and losses for parents, with the implications of some impending changes not yet fully known. Ostensibly, more free...
more
Following Labour's significant reforms to childcare policy, under the Coalition there has been a combination of gains and losses for parents, with the implications of some impending changes not yet fully known.
Ostensibly, more free childcare and early education (ECEC) offers an appealing solution and take-up of the universal entitlement is high. However, this demand-priming approach and its funding streams are too complex, inefficient and unsustainable. These has led to a shortage of supply of both pre-school and school-age care (with critically low provision for disabled children and those in rural areas), mismatch between service and work hours. The key failings of UK childcare policy are its prohibitively high costs (second highest in the OECD), equivalent to a regressive tax on mothers’ labour supply, reducing financial returns from their employment and increasing their reservation wage, and the linking of funding to parents being in paid work; these not only limit families’ choice and force parents to craft their own solutions, but also leave many families disadvantaged. It has been well established that the economic and social conditions of childhood frame the possibilities in later life and we argue that strategically investing in universal quality childcare will yield significant returns.
by
Jana Javornik
and
+1
Jo Ingold
Childcare policy
UK 2015 general election
Premature mortality in Slovenia in relation to selected biological, socioeconomic, and geographical determinants
To determine biological (sex and age), socioeconomic (marital status, education, and mother tongue) and geographical (region) factors connected with causes of death and lifespan (age at death, years-of-potential-life-lost, and mortality...
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To determine biological (sex and age), socioeconomic (marital status, education, and mother tongue) and geographical (region) factors connected with causes of death and lifespan (age at death, years-of-potential-life-lost, and mortality rate) in Slovenia in the 1990s. In this population-based cross-sectional study, we analyzed all deaths in the 25-64 age group (N=14 816) in Slovenia in 1992, 1995, and 1998. Causes of death, classified into groups according to the 10th revision of International Classification of Diseases, were linked to the data on the deceased from the 1991 Census. Stratified contingency-table analyses were performed. Years-of-potential-life-lost (YPLL) were calculated on the basis of population life-tables stratified by region and linearly modeled by the characteristics of the deceased. Poisson regression was applied to test the differences in mortality rate. Across all socioeconomic strata, men died at younger age than women (index of excess mortality in men excee...
by
Jana Javornik
Social Policy
Age Factors
Title: Parental leave as real opportunity structure for families and the source of gender and class inequalities
The article analyses public parental leave in eight northern European countries, and assesses its opportunity potential to facilitate equal parental involvement and employment, focusing on gender and income opportunity gaps. It draws on...
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The article analyses public parental leave in eight northern European countries, and assesses its opportunity potential to facilitate equal parental involvement and employment, focusing on gender and income opportunity gaps. It draws on Sen's capability approach and Weber's ideal-types to comparative policy analysis, and offers the ideal parental leave architecture, one which minimizes the policy-generated gender and class inequality in parents' opportunities to share parenting and keep their jobs, thus providing real opportunities for different groups of individuals to achieve valued functionings when they are parents. Five new policy indicators are created to assess leave against the ideal architecture, employing benchmarking and graphical analyses to analyse countries' public policies from 2015. The method considers two sources of opportunity inequality: the leave system (as the opportunity and constraint structure) and the socioeconomic and cultural contexts (as the conversion factors). It produces a nuanced and comprehensive overview of national leave policies, visually representing policy across countries. It challenges a policy-cluster idea and demonstrates that public leave policies in northern Europe are far from homogenous; they diverge not only in the degree to which they create real opportunities for parents across gender and income groups but also in the policy dimensions through which these opportunities are created. These findings suggest that family policies do not fit neatly the established welfare state types or the Nordic-Baltic divide, and that considering policy capability ramifications beyond gender warrants further research.
by
Jana Javornik
Comparative Public Policy
Parental Leave
The UK shared parental leave is a nice idea – but will it work?
Over the past few years the UK has introduced some significant changes in childcare policy that may mark a fundamental reorientation in the policy outlook. New shared parental leave, enacted by the Coalition Government in 2014 and...
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Over the past few years the UK has introduced some significant changes in childcare policy that may mark a fundamental reorientation in the policy outlook. New shared parental leave, enacted by the Coalition Government in 2014 and analysed in this paper, aims to help working parents reconcile work+care and to ‘enable working fathers to take a more active role in caring for their children and [for] working parents to share the care of their children’ (Modern Workplaces Consultation: Government Response to Flexible Parental Leave Proposals, 3 November 2012). The involvement of both parents in childcare was defined as ‘shared parenting,’ with the aim of promoting such practice to dismantle the gendered division of work (Javornik 2014). Here, the Government clearly focused on heterosexual couples.
The Children and Families Act, of which the new Shared Parental Leave regulation is a major feature, is a well-meant piece of legislation, intended to give parents more job security and more control over family life. The policy also aimed to 'create a new, more equal system which allows both parents to keep a strong link to their workplace' - by men spending more time caring. Shared parenting is expected to reduce the gender opportunity gaps, i.e. 'the “gender penalty” that women suffer from taking time out of the workplace with their children’. In this paper, we aim to explore whether shared parental leave is in fact likely to challenge gender inequality through shared parenting.
The new legislation purports to bring equality into the workplace and the home, however, the government has not created a new right here – it is merely allowing parents to split an existing right, making the chances of parents (voluntarily) sharing leave slimmer. Second, it creates a right only to the statutory minimum leave and pay. The Achilles heel of this intervention is that it doesn't apply to occupational schemes. Thus in many workplaces an incentive for the mother to take leave remains.
We argue that the new law is unlikely to encourage more fathers to take parental leave – it appears to provide parents with new rights and choice over how the leave is taken, but in practice, 'the discretion remains with the employers' (Javornik, 2014a; Mitchell 2015). We support this by examining the eligibility, the statutory remuneration and the need for maternal consent to access leave. Using a recent employment tribunal example, we show how legal uncertainty over possible use of anti-discrimination law (to challenge father's exclusion from occupational maternity leave schemes) abounds. We explore the concept of indirect discrimination in this context, and use concepts from the field of social policy to consider whether excluding fathers from occupational schemes can be objectively justified in the context of social norms moving towards greater equality in shared parenting
by
Jana Javornik
Childcare policy
Parental Leave
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