Beyond the ‘train-first’/‘work-first’ dichotomy: How welfare states help or hinder maternal employment

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, welfare states have introduced various ‘activation’ policies designed to promote employment. Most typologies distinguish between a Nordic-style ‘train-first’ approach focused on developing jobseekers’ employability and an Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ approach that instead emphasises quick job (re-)entry. These typologies tell us what activation means for the unemployed (male) worker. However, by ignoring the family, they overlook what activation means for the (female) parent-worker with childcare responsibilities. To contribute to filling this gap, this article uses fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis to compare 22 countries representing five ‘worlds’ of welfare by how (de-)activating their labour market policies, parental leave provisions, childcare services and the scheduling of primary education are for lone mothers. It reveals that cross-national variations in support for maternal activation are not well captured by the Nordic-style ‘train-first’/Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ dichotomy. Hence, despite the greater attention to gender and ‘new social risks’ within comparative social policy scholarship in recent years, the activation literature remains gender-blind.

Keywords

Active labour market policies childcare lone parents mothers’ employment typologies

Introduction: why we need a typology of lone mother activation

Since the late-1990s, welfare states across Europe and elsewhere have progressively converged on an ‘adult-worker’ model of welfare whereby all able-bodied men and women are required to be in paid work. Consequently, mothers are no longer excused from employment for the purposes of caregiving. Rather, they are subject to compulsory ‘activation’ (e.g. Daly, 2011; Jenson, 2015; Lewis, 2001). Yet, the precise meaning of activation and different ways in which welfare states seek to encourage, compel and prepare mothers to be in employment are not immediately clear. An extremely diverse range of policy instruments can be subsumed under activation. These often have different characteristics and reflect sharply contrasting ideas about the causes of unemployment, why it is a problem, who is responsible for managing it and what the best solution is (Bonoli, 2012).

To disambiguate the meaning of activation and capture its nuances, a significant body of comparative social policy literature has emerged which organises the different policy approaches welfare states take in activating the unemployed into a limited number of ‘ideal types’. Most of the literature distinguishes between a ‘work-first’ or ‘employment-first’ approach to activation that seeks to pressurise the unemployed into (any) jobs quickly and a ‘human capital development’ or ‘train-first’ approach that instead aims to develop individuals’ long-term employability. While the employment-first approach tends to be more dominant in Anglo-Saxon states, especially the United States, the human capital development approach is more characteristic of Sweden and other Nordics (e.g. Eichhorst et al., 2008; Lødemel and Trickey, 2000; Peck and Theodore, 2001). While there is less agreement in the literature regarding the positioning of Continental countries, most studies agree that there is no coherent ‘Continental’ activation strategy as different Continental countries pursue the employment-first and human capital development approaches to differing degrees (e.g. Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer, 2004). Meanwhile, Mediterranean and post-Soviet states are typically described as weakly activating (e.g. Morel et al., 2012) or as emphasising the duties and obligations of the unemployed only (e.g. the Czech Republic and Portugal in Serrano Pascual’s (2007) typology), if they are considered at all.

In focusing on the individual’s relationship first with the welfare state and second with the market, the human capital development/employment-first dichotomy tells us what activation means for the average unemployed worker. Yet, the problem is that this dichotomy overlooks the role of the family. As a result, it excludes childcare and other policies which support the activation of specifically mothers given the gendered division of caregiving within the family. In turn, existing activation typologies ignore the potential for policies to ‘de-activate’ mothers by reinforcing their caregiving rather than supporting their employment. For example, certain states provide flat-rate ‘home-care’ cash benefits to stay-at-home parents with young children for three or more years. In the vast majority of cases, the mother is the recipient (Duvander and Ellingsæter, 2016; Westlund, 2007). At the same time, employment or the use of state-subsidised childcare services can preclude entitlement (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2007, 2011). So while home-care allowances are couched in gender-neutral language, in practice, the gendered division of care work means that such allowances serve to de-activate mothers with young children (Westlund, 2007).

This article addresses the shortcomings of the mainstream activation literature in relation to the specific situations of mothers. It does this by focusing on how labour market policies support lone mothers to reconcile activation and childcare and by treating childcare policies, parental leave provisions and the scheduling of primary school systems as integrated components of the active welfare state. Through a fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis of 22 countries representing five ‘worlds’ of welfare (Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Continental, Mediterranean and post-Soviet), I examine how a range of benefits and services beyond labour market ones alone address the employment/childcare dilemma for lone parents.¹ Hence, following previous feminist research (e.g. Hobson, 1994; Orloff, 1993; Skevik, 2005), I treat the situation of single parents as a ‘litmus test’ for all mothers. This is because mothers head, on average, 85 percent of lone parent households across the OECD (2016b). Therefore, lone parents tend to be lone mothers, who are, by definition, women maintaining households with children independently of men.² Thus, I use the terms ‘lone parent’ and ‘lone mother’ interchangeably and assume that if policies are good enough to allow single mothers to reconcile the demands of employment and childcare, they will be good enough for all mothers irrespective of any partners’ role in caregiving.

Although mothers in couple households tend to have more and younger children than single mothers (Chzhen and Bradshaw, 2012) and welfare states sometimes treat mothers differently according to their partnership status, policies for single mothers are still relevant for their partnered counterparts. This is firstly because they give an indication of mothers’ ‘exit’ options from relationships. That is, the better the situation for single mothers, the more empowered partnered mothers are to exercise voice within relationships and leave undesirable ones (Hobson, 1990; Orloff, 2009). Second, transformations in family structures and behaviour over the last four decades have made single parenthood a life course stage for increasing numbers of women (Bonoli, 2005). For instance, across the 17 Western states included in Andersson and Philipov’s (2002) study, on average, one-quarter of women will spend at least some time as a single parent by the age of 40. So while lone parenthood is typically transient, with single mothers often re-partnering or children eventually leaving home, lone parenthood is nevertheless a ‘new social risk’ to which a significant proportion of women are now exposed.

The article reveals that cross-national variations in support for maternal activation are not well captured by the dichotomy between a Nordic-style human capital development approach and an Anglo-Saxon employment-first one. On one hand, policies to develop mothers’ human capital are not as extensive across the Nordics as predicted by the existing activation literature and against the common assumption of a single ‘women-friendly’ and gender-equal Nordic model of welfare (e.g. Gornick and Meyers, 2009). Furthermore, policies in Finland are potentially de-activating for mothers. On the other hand, policies towards lone parents in Australia and the United Kingdom are not conducive to rapid job (re-)entry against the characterisation of these states as employment-first. What is more, the findings show that the mainstream activation literature underestimates the extent to which certain Mediterranean and post-Soviet states are activating for mothers. Overall, these results indicate that despite the greater attention to gender and new social risks within the comparative social policy literature, the branch of this literature which focuses on activation still ignores women.

The next section summarises existing research on lone mother activation. I then outline the methods in the third and fourth sections, followed by the findings in the fifth. I conclude by highlighting the contribution of these findings to the activation literature.

Lone mother activation: state of the art

During the 1990s, research interest in lone mothers within the field of comparative social policy peaked. This was partly due to the increased prevalence of lone mothers and concerns about their relatively high rates of poverty and welfare dependency. But it was also because lone mothers offered an instructive category for analysing how welfare states resolved the employment/childcare dilemma for all mothers, independently of any partners’ contributions (e.g. Hobson, 1994; Lewis and Hobson, 1997; Orloff, 1993). Lewis and Hobson (1997) subsequently identified two main care regimes according to how they treated lone mothers: the ‘caregiver’ model, which assumed that all lone and partnered mothers were full-time carers; and the ‘parent-worker’ or ‘adult-worker’ model, which treated lone mothers and other parents as full-time workers.

Since the late-1990s, however, welfare states across Europe and elsewhere have progressively converged on the adult-worker model (Lewis, 2001). As a result, participation in paid work or employment-related activities has become compulsory for lone parents (Haux, 2013). Several studies examine this policy development in detail. They show that lone mother conditionality in Anglo-Saxon states, excluding the United States, is ‘light’ by international standards. Nevertheless, policies in Anglo-Saxon states, and increasingly Continental ones too, focus on securing rapid job placement mainly by overcoming practical obstacles to lone mothers’ employment, such as dealing with the benefits system (e.g. Finn and Gloster, 2010; Knijn et al., 2007; Strell and Duncan, 2001). Yet as the family policy literature shows, working parents in Anglo-Saxon states are given minimal support to reconcile activation and childcare and are instead largely expected to make their own arrangements through the market (e.g. Gornick and Meyers, 2004). Meanwhile, despite some modernisation in recent years (e.g. Häusermann, 2006), Continental states, excluding Belgium and France, remain focused on promoting mothers’ caregiving over their employment (e.g. Leitner, 2003). In contrast, activation in Nordic countries focuses more positively on integrating lone mothers into employment by improving their social skills and confidence, and widespread childcare facilities and comprehensive leave policies support mothers’ continuous employment (e.g. Rowlingson and Millar, 2002; Skevik, 2005), albeit less so in Finland and Norway (e.g. Ciccia and Bleijenbergh, 2014).

Thus, existing studies of lone mother activation detail how certain welfare states activate lone mothers. Yet, they do not go far enough in capturing the full diversity of policy approaches. This is because they either focus on a single country at a time or compare just a small number (three to seven) of welfare states. Hence, the extent to which the policy approaches of these select few countries are idiosyncratic to them only, or are instead representative of the approaches that other welfare states take, is unclear. Furthermore, because existing studies focus exclusively on Anglo-Saxon, Nordic or Continental countries, not enough is known about the diversity and characteristics of lone mother activation policies in Mediterranean and post-Soviet states.

More recently, Haux’s (2013) typology of lone mother activation captures some of the diversity missing in earlier studies by encompassing 29 welfare states. She identifies three broad approaches to activating lone mothers. The first approach, voluntary activation, involves no compulsory activation. However, no country any longer conforms to this approach (author’s update from Haux, 2013). Conversely, countries which adhere to the general activation approach expect (almost) all single parents to be available for employment. Most Mediterranean and post-Soviet states follow this approach. Finally, countries following the age of child approach exempt lone parents from activation requirements until their youngest child reaches a certain age. This age threshold varies from a few weeks (many Canadian provinces and US states) to a few years (the Czech Republic, Norway and most Continental states) or compulsory school age (other Anglo-Saxon states and the Netherlands). France and Norway additionally exempt the custodial parent from employment requirements during the first year of lone parenthood. In contrast, Belgium, the Netherlands, most Nordic countries and a few US states additionally use trained caseworkers to decide whether or not to impose job-search requirements on a case-by-case basis given a single parent’s particular circumstances and/or the availability of local jobs and childcare.

While Haux’s typology elucidates the approaches that a wide range of welfare states take in identifying lone mothers for compulsory activation, it still paints an incomplete picture of lone mother activation. This is because countries are categorised by variation along one dimension of lone mother activation only, namely, the point at which lone mothers are no longer excused from employment for the purposes of full-time caregiving and are instead subject to compulsory activation. Thus, Haux’s typology does not detail how welfare states seek to move lone mothers into jobs or support them to reconcile employment and childcare once they are deemed ‘work-ready’. This article therefore builds on Haux’s typology by incorporating these additional important dimensions into a more holistic typology of lone mother activation. Specifically, it compares welfare states by (1) the strictness of job availability and search conditions imposed on lone mothers, (2) lone mothers’ access to training measures to enhance their employability and (3) the degree to which family and education policies support lone mothers to balance employment and childcare.

The analysis also goes beyond previous aforementioned studies of lone mother activation based on national case studies by incorporating a larger number (22) of welfare states. For comparability with the mainstream activation literature, I include a range of countries representing the three main ‘worlds’ of welfare for which data are available. I also incorporate Mediterranean and post-Soviet states for which data on the key indicators are available. As aforementioned, previous studies of lone mother activation and the wider activation literature generally overlook these two regions; yet, they have received increasing attention within the family policy literature. Much of this literature initially characterised family policies in these two regions as rudimentary (e.g. Leitner, 2003). However, recent studies suggest that policies in some of these countries are actually highly supportive of maternal employment, potentially even to the same extent as in the Nordic system (e.g. Javornik, 2012; Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008; Tavora, 2012). Thus, lone mother activation in these states deserves greater attention and to be placed within comparative context, which is an aim of this analysis.

Method: fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis

To compare a relatively large number (22) of countries across multiple (three) dimensions, I use fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis. This method is more adept than traditional statistical methods to capturing variation between welfare states across multiple policy dimensions. This is because countries are assigned to ideal types according to theoretical and substantive knowledge, rather than statistical averages or degrees of statistical association. Consequently, fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis is not prone to ‘outlier effects’, whereby a welfare state’s exceptionally high or exceptionally low score on one policy dimension only determines its overall classification within a typology, irrespective of its scores on other policy dimensions of interest (Hudson and Kühner, 2010).

At the same time, fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis is better equipped for comparing a relatively large number of countries than other case-based methods. Case-oriented methods typically involve comparing countries on the basis of national case studies that capture the idiosyncrasies of each individual case. The volume and complexity of data generated make it difficult to compare more than a handful of countries at a time in a systematic and thorough way. However, fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis is unique among case-based methods in that it involves comparing countries using a set of fixed thresholds and agreed-on, logical principles (Fiss, 2009). By reducing the complexity of the data so that it becomes more manageable (George and Bennett, 2005; Ragin and Sonnett, 2005), these thresholds and principles permit comparison of a larger number of countries (Ragin, 2008).

In fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis, each policy dimension of interest is defined as a ‘set’ to which countries have varying degrees of membership. To determine countries’ membership to each set, the set must be ‘calibrated’. This involves establishing, on the basis of theoretical and substantive knowledge, three ‘qualitative breakpoints’ or thresholds. The lower qualitative breakpoint of 0 denotes a country as fully out of the set, while the upper qualitative breakpoint of 1 denotes it as fully in. The ‘crossover point’ (0.5) signals that a country is neither more in nor more out of the set. Hence, for a country to belong to a set, it must achieve a score greater than 0.5 to indicate that it is more in the set than out of it (Kvist, 1999).

Set membership provides the basis for categorising welfare states into ideal types. With k being the number of policy dimensions or sets, there are 2^k possible ideal types (Vis, 2007). Two logical principles underpin the organisation of countries into these ideal types. The first is the ‘negation principle’. This stipulates that the degree to which a welfare state exhibits the ‘negation’ or reverse of a given set is one minus its membership score to that set. For instance, if A has a membership score of 0.1 to set ‘x’, then its membership score to the ‘NOT x’ set is 1 − 0.1 = 0.9. The second principle is the ‘minimum principle’. This states that a welfare state’s membership to an ideal type is the lowest of its set scores. Thus, if A has a score of 0.1 for set ‘x’ and 0.7 for set ‘y’, then A’s membership to the xy ideal type is 0.1, the lowest of these set scores (Kvist, 1999). In other words, A is not a member of the xy ideal type.

The most significant shortcoming of the method used in this study concerns the lack of objective standards for establishing the choice of indicators and thresholds which determine welfare states’ (non-)membership to each set (Ragin, 2008). To address this, I follow Marchal and Van Mechelen (2015) in using sensitivity analyses to measure the impact of a selection of alternative indicators and cut-off points on welfare states’ (non-)membership to each set. There is of course an infinite number of potential variations in indicators and cut-off points which could be tested. However, for parsimony, I focus on six alternative ways of operationalising the sets for which the strongest justifications can be made (Appendix 4).

Dimensions of comparison

This section gives details of the three sets which represent the dimensions of comparison. Reflecting the human capital development/employment-first dichotomy, the first set captures lone mothers’ access to training opportunities, while the second set measures the strictness of employment-related conditions imposed on lone mothers. To capture how welfare states help lone mothers to combine family and employment, the third set measures the degree to which childcare services, leave policies and primary school schedules support maternal employment. Where membership to a set is measured by more than one indicator, a country’s overall set score is the lowest of its scores on each of the indicators which captures that set (minimum principle). Appendix 1 provides details of sources.

Opportunities for training

Comparative data that zoom in on training opportunities for specifically lone mothers do not exist. Nevertheless, two indicators offer adequate proxies. The first indicator, spending on training,³ captures the priority given to improving the skills of the unemployed. Following previous studies (e.g. Nickell and Layard, 1999; OECD, 2003; Vis, 2007), I use spending on training per person unemployed, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) per person employed. This is to adjust for cross-national differences in unemployment rates and economy size. It also ensures that high spending on training does not simply reflect high unemployment. The indicator is given by the following formula

\begin{matrix} \frac{Spending on training / total registered unemployed}{GDP / total number of employed persons} \\ = \frac{Spending on training / GDP}{Total registered unemployed / total numberof employed persons} \\ = \frac{Spending on training as a % of GDP}{Unemployment rate, %} \end{matrix}

The resulting figure can be more simply expressed as the percentage of GDP spent on training for every 1 percent of unemployment.

According to existing studies that focus on spending on all activation policies, ‘activating countries’ spend 0.20–0.25 percent or more of GDP on activation for every 1 percent of unemployment (e.g. OECD, 2003; Vis, 2007). However, training comprises just one of five types of policy encompassed under the label of activation. Therefore, assuming that training commands at least its ‘equal’ share of the total activation budget in ‘activating countries’ – that is, one-fifth (Hudson and Kühner, 2009) – the upper qualitative breakpoint (fully in) is 0.25/5=0.05. Hence, when welfare states spend 0.05 percent or more of GDP on training for every 1 percent of unemployment, opportunities for training are considered widespread.

Meanwhile, studies that focus on spending on all activation policies identify countries which spend 0.05 percent of GDP or less on total activation policies for every 1 percent of unemployment as having the lowest activation spending profiles (OECD, 2003; Vis, 2007). Again assuming that training commands at least its equal share of the activation budget (one-fifth), the lower qualitative breakpoint (fully out) is 0.05/5=0.01. So when welfare states spend 0.01 percent or less of GDP on training for every 1 percent of unemployment, opportunities for training are few and far between. The crossover point (neither in nor out) is the mid-point between the upper and lower breakpoints of 0.03 percent.

The second indicator gives a proxy of the extent to which lone mothers’ caregiving may be an obstacle to their participation in training programmes. It is based on survey data from the Adult Education Survey and Survey of Adult Skills (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)), which asked women to identify the reason(s) why they did not participate in lifelong learning during the last 12 months, despite wanting to. Specifically, the second indicator is based on the percentages of women surveyed who identified family responsibilities as a barrier to their participation in education or training. The breakpoints are 40 percent for fully out, 10 percent for fully in and 25 percent for neither in nor out (Chłoń-Domińczak and Lis, 2013). When over 40 percent of women identify family responsibilities as a barrier, this suggests strong cultural support for women’s caregiving, a lack of ‘care-compatible’ training courses or a shortage or lack of information about the availability of childcare services. Consequently, lone mothers’ position as sole caregiver within the household is likely to prevent many from accessing available training opportunities. Conversely, when 9 in 10 women do not identify family responsibilities as a barrier to training, education/childcare conflicts are less likely an issue for lone mothers.

Strict conditionality

To capture the extent to which welfare states rely on compulsion to activate lone mothers, the second set is operationalised by an index of the employment-related conditions and sanctions imposed on lone mothers not currently in employment (Appendix 2). The index comprises four distinct items assigned equal weights. Each item is measured by one or more sub-items, and scores for each item are given by the average of scores across these sub-items. Scores range from a high of 5 to indicate very strict employment-related conditions to a low of 1 to signify weak conditionality.

Item 1 draws on Haux’s (2013) aforementioned typology of the approaches welfare states take in identifying lone mothers for compulsory activation. Countries which impose compulsory activation on all or most lone mothers receive higher scores, while countries which are more sensitive to each lone mother’s particular circumstances receive lower scores. Items 2–4 are based on Langenbucher’s (2015) index of the conditions attached to unemployment benefits (see Appendix 4 for the impact on the results of measuring the conditions attached to social assistance instead). Item 2 captures the strictness of job availability criteria and how much flexibility lone mothers have to turn down job offers. Item 3 concerns the degree of monitoring of lone mothers’ job-search activities, while item 4 captures the severity of sanctions in cases of non-compliance with employment-related conditions. The extent to which welfare states treat lone mothers differently from other jobseekers varies across these different indicators. Consequently, while scoring on certain items reflects the treatment of specifically lone mothers or mothers/parents more broadly, scoring on other items reflects the treatment of all jobseekers.

Because eligibility for unemployment benefits in the United States is determined mainly at the state level, scoring on the conditionality index is based on legislation and guidelines in Michigan. This is partly because detailed information on eligibility requirements is available for this state. Moreover, Michigan offers a good benchmark for ascertaining how the United States in general treats lone mothers, since most of its policies match those in the majority of other states and are a mix of policy ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ (Blank and Haskins, 2001; Seefeldt and Castelli, 2009).

Activating childcare policies

The final set is also operationalised by a summary index. This index captures the extent to which a country’s family policies and primary school schedule support maternal employment, regardless of whether this is their intention (Appendix 3). The index comprises three items. Again, a country’s overall index score is the average of its scores across these three items. An overall score of 1 indicates limited to no support for mothers to be in or remain in employment, while an average score of 5 signifies strong support for maternal employment.

The first item in the index captures the extent to which childcare policies support maternal employment in the three years immediately following childbirth. It is measured by three sub-items. Sub-item 1 concerns the duration of maternity and parental leaves. Without access to paid leave, new mothers may be forced to withdraw from employment altogether. Very short leaves can have the same effect. Recent studies suggest that leave periods should be at least 30–39 weeks for mothers’ employment continuity and career progression (Akgunduz and Plantenga, 2013; Keck and Saraceno, 2013). However, long leaves can be detrimental too as a result of substantial losses to mothers’ human capital, missed opportunities for career advancement and potential difficulties in being re-employed by the same employer (Fagnani, 1998). Many studies mark 1 year as the turning point beyond which additional years of leave are associated with (marginal) wage penalties (Grimshaw and Rubery, 2015), although Pettit and Hook (2005) find that the most detrimental effects begin after around 3 years’ leave. Consequently, leaves shorter than 30 weeks or longer than 3 years receive equally low scores on sub-item 1.⁴

Sub-item 2 covers the generosity of leave provisions. Leave paid at 70–80 percent of previous earnings provides strong incentives for mothers to return to their previous employer once the period of paid leave expires in order to avoid a sharp drop in income (Bonoli, 2013; Gornick and Meyers, 2003; Wall et al., 2009). In contrast, low replacement rates give limited pressure for mothers to return to their previous employer once the period of paid leave expires (Bonoli, 2013). ‘Low’ is here defined as 20 percent of previous earnings. This is because national consumption surveys suggest that individuals cannot afford to maintain their standard of living when replacement rates fall below this threshold (Kvist, 2007).

To capture the availability of childcare for under-threes, sub-item 3 concerns enrolment rates in formal childcare services for this age group. Low enrolment rates indicate a potential shortage of childcare services, while high enrolment rates suggest that services are extensive and generally accessible to most parents. Countries receive a score of 5 on this sub-item when enrolment rates for under-threes exceed 33 percent, as this figure reflects the European Union’s (EU) ‘Barcelona target’. To reflect enrolment rates in those countries which are ‘falling behind’ (37) this target, countries receive the minimum score of 1 when enrolment is below 15 percent (Mills et al., 2014).

The second item on the childcare index covers childcare policies for mothers with pre-primary education age children. Sub-item 4 concerns enrolment rates in formal childcare services for 3- to 5-year-olds. Countries with enrolment rates of at least 90 percent receive the maximum score of 5 on this sub-item to again reflect the EU’s Barcelona targets. Conversely, countries with enrolment rates below 70 percent receive the minimum score of 1 to reflect enrolment rates in countries lagging behind the EU’s target for this age group (Mills et al., 2014). To avoid the distortion of a country having high childcare coverage but for limited hours only, full-time equivalent (FTE) childcare enrolment rates are used. These represent what enrolment rates would be if all those children attending formal childcare services did so on a full-time basis. FTEs are usually standardised by a 30-hour week (e.g. OECD, 2016b). However, because I am interested in the extent of support for maternal employment, I define ‘full-time’ as 40 hours to reflect the dominant definition of a standard working week (Lee et al., 2007: 20). FTEs are given by the following formula

FTE = \frac{Percentage of children in formal childcare arrangements \times average weekly hours of attendance}{40}

The third item in the childcare index covers policies for mothers with school-age children. It is measured by two sub-items. Sub-item 5 captures the length and continuity of the primary school week. Countries with school schedules that align more closely with regular, full-time employment hours receive higher scores (Gornick et al., 1997; Plantenga and Remery, 2013). In contrast, lower scores are awarded to countries with low school weekly hours or discontinuous schedules, whereby children are sent home during their lunch breaks or have certain parts of the week off. Sub-item 6 captures the prevalence of out-of-school services by average enrolment rates. Countries receive a maximum score of 5 when 80 percent or more of children attend out-of-school services, as this figure reflects enrolment rates in countries with very high coverage of out-of-school services according to the OECD (2016b). Conversely, countries with enrolment rates in out-of-school services of below 10 percent receive a minimum score of 1 to reflect enrolment rates in countries where coverage is low (OECD, 2016b).

Results: lone mother activation regimes

Table 1 details the countries’ membership scores to the different sets and their classification into lone mother activation models. Countries belong to one of seven such models. The first two models, general coercion and delayed coercion, are both characterised by membership to the ‘strict conditionality set’ only. However, I treat them as distinct lone mother activation models to reflect significant substantive differences between them. Table 2 details each country’s overall membership score to its respective lone mother activation model.

Table 1.

Membership scores of 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to three fuzzy sets and their classification into seven lone mother activation models.

Lone mother activation models and countries	Opportunities for training	Strict conditionality	Activating childcare policies
Model 1: General coercion
Bulgaria	0.00	0.63	0.22
Czech Republic	0.00	0.56	0.36
Italy	0.05	0.59	0.43
Latvia	0.00	0.69	0.31
Lithuania	0.00	0.61	0.40
Poland	0.00	0.64	0.43
Slovakia	0.00	0.77	0.28
Spain	0.00	0.53	0.29
United States	0.00	0.70	0.21
Model 2: Delayed coercion
Australia	0.00	0.52	0.32
Germany	0.30	0.57	0.44
The Netherlands	0.00	0.66	0.42
United Kingdom	0.00	0.68	0.42
Model 3: Care-sensitive coercion
Norway	0.00	0.54	0.63
Portugal	0.21	0.81	0.72
Slovenia	0.00	0.80	0.75
Model 4: Partial activation
Austria	0.74	0.57	0.22
France	0.59	0.55	0.40
Model 5: Holistic activation
Denmark	0.91	0.55	0.85
Model 6: Optional activation
Belgium	0.19	0.47	0.78
Sweden	0.16	0.48	0.69
Model 7: Weak activation
Finland	0.44	0.38	0.35

Source: Own calculations.

Scores are between 0 and 1 with bold indicating membership of a set (>0.50) and higher scores signifying stronger membership.

Table 2.

Membership scores of 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to seven lone mother activation models.

Lone mother activation model	Countries (overall membership score to the model)
General coercion	Slovakia (0.72); United States (0.70); Latvia (0.69); Bulgaria (0.63); Lithuania (0.60); Italy (0.57); Poland (0.57); Czech Republic (0.56); Spain (0.53)
Delayed coercion	The Netherlands (0.58); United Kingdom (0.58); Germany (0.56); Australia (0.52)
Care-sensitive coercion	Slovenia (0.75); Portugal (0.72); Norway (0.54)
Partial activation	Austria (0.57); France (0.55)
Holistic activation	Denmark (0.55)
Optional activation	Belgium (0.53); Sweden (0.52)
Weak activation	Finland (0.56)

Source: Own calculations.

Membership scores are between 0 and 1. Scores greater than 0.50 indicate membership with higher scores signifying stronger membership.

The first lone mother activation model is labelled general coercion. Most of the Central and Eastern European states, the Mediterranean states of Italy and Spain and the liberal state of the United States are in this model. Here, joblessness is understood primarily as a behavioural problem. The aim is to push the jobless into (any) paid work by imposing strict employment-related conditions while simultaneously offering few training opportunities. At the same time, policies to support the reconciliation of employment and care are limited. Although primary school schedules for lone mothers with school-age children in the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland are generally conducive to a 40-hour working week, this is not the case elsewhere. Instead, insufficient out-of-school services or irregular and/or part-time school hours mean that working longer than part-time hours can be difficult for lone mothers in the absence of informal sources of caregiving. Yet, the scarcity of part-time job opportunities across Central and Eastern European states may shut lone mothers out of employment altogether.⁵

The second lone mother activation model, labelled delayed coercion, contains Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Again, lone mothers’ inactivity is primarily seen as a behavioural problem. However, the subjection of lone mothers to compulsory activation is ‘delayed’ in this model by the prioritisation of mothers’ caregiving roles while children are small. In Germany, lone mothers are not required to engage in activation programmes until their youngest child turns 3 and has a guaranteed place in kindergarten. In Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, lone mothers are exempt from employment requirements until children start primary school.

Furthermore, once lone mothers do become subject to compulsory activation in the delayed coercion model, demands on their job availability are tempered by the promotion of a part-time worker/carer model. In Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, lone mothers are permitted to restrict their job availability to part-time or school hours on account of their caregiving responsibilities. Nevertheless, the under-provision of out-of-school care services and a short school day, which finishes before 3:00/3:30 p.m. and before lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays in the Netherlands, mean that many lone mothers may have little choice but to work part-time. Western Germany similarly promotes a part-time worker/carer model for lone mothers subject to compulsory activation, with most pre-primary education services and primary schools finishing before lunchtime and just one-quarter of school-age children attending out-of-school care services (Marcus and Peter, 2015; Plantenga and Remery, 2013).

However, full-time childcare services for pre-primary education and school-age children are more widespread in Eastern Germany. In Eastern Germany, 68 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds have access to full-time day care compared to 25 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds in Western Germany (Zabel, 2013). Eastern Germany also contains a greater concentration of all-day as opposed to half-day schools, and three-quarters of school-age children are enrolled in after-school services compared to just one-quarter in Western Germany (Plantenga and Remery, 2013; Zabel, 2013). Therefore, Eastern Germany arguably sits closer to the third model, care-sensitive coercion .

The care-sensitive coercion model contains Norway, Portugal and Slovenia. While this model also emphasises welfare conditionality, there are greater provisions for lone mothers to externalise their caregiving in order that they can meet such conditionality. Pre-primary education services are widespread and available predominantly on a full-time basis. In addition, primary school schedules are either consistent with a 40-hour working week (Portugal) or complemented by widespread out-of-school care services (Norway and Slovenia). So while this model makes few specific provisions for lone mothers’ particular circumstances, there is nevertheless widespread support for full-time maternal employment, which benefits lone mothers who are willing and able to be in employment.

The fourth lone mother activation model contains Austria and France. This model takes a more encompassing approach towards lone mother activation than the previous three models, recognising both behavioural and structural barriers to employment. Thus, when children start pre-primary education and lone mothers become subject to compulsory activation, they are not necessarily compelled to take any job as in the other models. Instead, they are permitted to participate in training and other programmes designed to help them secure better jobs. Still, this model is labelled partial activation to signify that policy is not particularly supportive of lone mothers’ participation in full-time, regular jobs. Rather, it supports a part-time worker/carer role. This is because despite high enrolment rates in pre-primary education, services tend to be limited to part-time hours only. Furthermore, most primary schools either operate on a half-day basis (Austria) or send children home during their 2-hour lunch break (France). Additionally, French schools are shut on Wednesdays, and provision of childcare services to cover this closure is insufficient (Plantenga and Remery, 2013).

The fifth model, holistic activation, also relies on a combination of human capital-oriented and employment-first measures in order to activate lone mothers. However, childcare policies are more conducive to lone mothers’ full-time employment than in the partial activation or weak activation models. Denmark epitomises this model: 88 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds are in full-time childcare and almost all school-age children attend out-of-school services that are complementary to the school day.

The sixth lone mother activation model contains Belgium and Sweden. It is labelled optional activation to signify that although formal care services for children of all ages are widespread, conditionality is ‘light’ by international standards with limited targeted policies for lone parents. In addition, training opportunities to facilitate lone mothers’ career progression are generally lacking, and lone mothers in Sweden are likely to face barriers in accessing available training programmes because of their childcare responsibilities. So while there is policy support for maternal activation, policy does not explicitly set out to activate lone mothers.

The final model, weak activation, comprises Finland. As in the previous model, policies to address the activation of specifically lone mothers are generally lacking. However, childcare policies are not as activating as in the previous model. The availability of a home-care allowance until children turn 3 explicitly promotes lone mothers’ withdrawal from employment while children are small. Thereafter, policy appears to promote lone mothers’ part-time employment only. Pre-school enrolment rates in Finland continue to lag behind those in other Nordics and many other European countries. Furthermore, just half of first-grade pupils and around one-quarter of second-grade pupils attend out-of-school services, although provision has improved in recent years (Plantenga and Remery, 2013). Moreover, parents can continue to receive a reduced home-care allowance until their youngest child is around 9, provided they do not work longer than part-time (EU, 2016). Overall then, family policies in Finland potentially serve to de-activate mothers.

Discussion of findings and implications for the activation literature

Since the late-1990s, increased attention within the mainstream welfare state literature to gender issues and ‘new social risks’, which arise most acutely for women, gives the impression that this literature is now sensitised to the particular situations of women. However, by examining how policies from across a range of fields potentially (de-)activate lone mothers as a ‘litmus test’ for how welfare states help or hinder the employment of all mothers, this article illuminates a number of surprising results from the perspective of the mainstream activation literature which highlight its gender-blindness.

In particular, the non-membership of most Nordic countries to the ‘opportunities for training’ set indicates that policies to develop mothers’ human capital are not as extensive as predicted by the activation literature. This finding also goes against the assumption of a single ‘women-friendly’ and gender-equal Nordic model of welfare that underpins many British and North American analyses of welfare states (Lister, 2009). While other studies similarly distance Norway from the human capital development approach (e.g. Lødemel and Trickey, 2000), Sweden’s non-membership to this set is more surprising. Yet, as Bonoli (2012) argues, Sweden’s attention from the mid-1970s shifted away from training and towards job creation schemes designed to keep unemployment down as a result of economic stagnation. Since the mid-1990s, pressures to accelerate transitions back into work, in a context of rising unemployment and mounting evidence of the ineffectiveness of training programmes, have kept training expenditure low (Andersson and Wärvik, 2012; Bonoli, 2012; OECD, 2015). Moreover, Sweden’s non-membership to the ‘opportunities for training’ set also reflects mothers’ disadvantaged access to training opportunities: of women who wanted to participate in training, 22 percent could not do so because of family responsibilities; the corresponding figure for men is 15 percent (Eurostat, 2011). Likewise, despite high training expenditure in Finland, family responsibilities prevent 27 percent of women from participating in training compared to 17 percent of men (Eurostat, 2011). These findings support evidence suggesting that despite high female employment rates, the division of domestic and care work remains highly gendered across the Nordics. Women’s greater difficulties in accessing training might also contribute to explaining high rates of gender segregation across Nordic labour markets (e.g. Lister, 2009).

In addition, by incorporating childcare and education policies as indicators of activation effort, the analysis highlights how Finland stands out among the Nordics for the de-activating potential of its family policies. Since the 1980s, Finland has provided a home-care allowance in order to give ‘parents’ (read: mothers) with young children the ‘choice’ to stay at home until children turn 3. Although both Norway and Sweden introduced similar schemes in 1998 and 2008, respectively, take-up in these countries is much lower than in Finland at 5 percent in Sweden and 25 percent in Norway compared to 52 percent in Finland (Ellingsæter, 2012). This is firstly because, as this analysis has shown, childcare services for under-threes are not as widespread in Finland as in other Nordic states. Second, unlike Norway and Sweden, Finland supplements the basic home-care allowance, which is worth about 10 percent of the average monthly wage rate, with generous financial ‘top-ups’ depending on family income or size (Ellingsæter, 2012). The relatively high costs of childcare in Finland compared to other Nordics only strengthen the financial incentives to take up the home-care allowance (OECD, 2016a). Third, whereas the home-care allowance has faced strong opposition in Norway and Sweden due to gender equality concerns, support for familial care has undergone a resurgence in Finland (Meagher and Szebehely, 2012).

These factors, in a context of a gender-segregated labour market and gendered parental obligations, give strong incentives and pressures for mothers in Finland to take up the home-care allowance and therefore take long and potentially detrimental career breaks (Mahon, 2002; Plantenga and Remery, 2009). Thereafter, Finland, unlike other Nordic states, provides a ‘flexible care allowance’ for parents working part-time or not at all until children turn 9 (EU, 2016). The availability of this allowance, short pre-school and primary school days and only moderate provision of out-of-school care services do little to encourage mothers’ re-integration into full-time employment.

Furthermore, by zooming in on the treatment of specifically lone mothers, the analysis highlights that the employment-first approach typical of Anglo-Saxon states is not imposed in Australia and the United Kingdom on lone mothers as strongly as on other jobseekers. In both countries, lone mothers are exempt from job-search requirements until children start primary school. And once they are deemed work-ready, lone mothers in the United Kingdom can limit their availability to jobs that are compatible with school hours, even if no such jobs are available locally. Similarly, lone mothers in Australia can restrict their job availability to 15 hours per week and may refuse employment in the absence of suitable or affordable childcare during school holidays. These policy features reflect stronger popular and political resistance in Australia and the United Kingdom to the erosion of income support for motherhood than in the United States which, as this analysis shows, imposes strict employment-related conditions on lone mothers largely irrespective of their specific needs. This is rooted in historically higher female employment rates and less extensive state supports for maternalism in the United States, as well as the stronger influence of conservative and racist discourses which blame various social ills on the supposed welfare dependency of black single mothers (Orloff, 2002).

The analysis additionally challenges the mainstream activation literature’s assumptions that Mediterranean and post-Soviet states are weakly activating or focused on emphasising the duties and obligations of the unemployed only. By treating the active dimensions of childcare and education policies as integrated components of the active welfare state, the analysis suggests that policies in Slovenia and Portugal are actually very supportive of maternal employment. In fact, both of these countries are situated in the same lone mother activation model as Norway on account of their comprehensive childcare policies. Historical policy legacies help to explain these findings. In Portugal, the exodus of men to fight in the colonial wars during the 1960s and 1970s, in a context of revolution and strong economic growth, facilitated women’s entry into full-time employment and the expansion of childcare services (Rosa et al., 2015; Tavora, 2012; Torres, 2006). A strong work ethic has surrounded female employment ever since (Moss and Wall, 2007). Meanwhile, the Nordic model has provided the blueprint for Slovenia’s childcare policies since the 1980s. Even under communism, Slovenia was more open to Western influence and had greater autonomy over its policymaking than other Soviet states following the Yugoslavia–Soviet split in 1948. The aim of upholding gender equality, pedagogical goals and the desire to keep female employment high in order to support economic growth have kept childcare policies activating following the transition to a market economy (Formánková and Dobrotić, 2011; Korintus and Stropnik, 2009).

Overall, this article represents a first step towards incorporating gender into comparative scholarship on activation. Placing women at the centre of activation scholarship is important given that the success of the adult-worker model depends on a gender-equitable order which both accommodates workers’ caregiving responsibilities and enables women to access an independent wage through the market on equal terms to men (Fraser, 2000). To build on this work, future research should likewise pay greater attention to the presence (or absence) of specific provisions within labour market policies which account for women’s fertility and caregiving. In addition, it should treat childcare and other policies beyond labour market ones alone which support women’s employment as integrated components of the active welfare state. Moreover, as this analysis shows, future research also needs to consider how policies in other fields potentially undermine the activation agenda’s employment goals by de-activating women and possibly other groups of jobseekers.

However, the social policy literature must also take a broader perspective that moves beyond the focus on women as simply mothers. Women’s labour market position continues to be undermined by gendered discrimination in the workplace and society at large that goes beyond the disadvantages stemming from childbearing and caregiving. For example, the ‘Heidi versus Howard’ experiment demonstrates how unconscious bias based on cultural stereotypes of gender can weaken women’s labour market position. The experiment is based on a case study chronicling how Heidi Roizen became a successful venture capitalist. Among a group of students, half was given Heidi’s real-life story to read, while the other half was given the exact same story but with Heidi’s name changed to Howard. The students were then asked about their impressions of Heidi and Howard. While they rated Heidi and Howard equally in terms of success, they thought Howard was likeable, whereas Heidi seemed selfish and not ‘the type of person you would want to hire or work for’. Hence, because Howard matched stereotypical expectations of men as providers, decisive and driven, he was liked. But because Heidi violated the stereotype of women as caregivers, sensitive and communal, she was disliked. This bias continues to be at the root of why women are held and hold themselves back in the workplace (Sandberg, 2013: 39–40). Future research must therefore become more aware of the broader causes of gender inequality beyond motherhood and care in order to develop a more sophisticated critique of the activation agenda and social policy literature more widely.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4 Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to my PhD supervisors, Traute Meyer and Ann Berrington, for their support and constructive feedback. I also thank Michal Polakowski, participants at the 2015 EDAC/ESPAnet summer school in Leuven and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was undertaken as part of doctoral research funded by an ESRC 1+3 Studentship Award.

Notes

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