wow-inequalities/02-data/intermediate/wos_sample/a96137dee1bf1e2bc7f71629749c49e7-rodriguez-modrono-p/info.yaml

abstract: 'An emerging body of research about the impact of the recession and

  austerity on women recognized but did not examine the potential

  different impact of the crisis and austerity reforms on different groups

  of women, particularly how it affected the labour supply, employment

  attachment, patterns and experience of low educated women (e.g. Bettio

  et al., 2013; Karamessini and Rubery, 2014). Yet this is an important

  question. The policy responses at the European and national level

  consisted mostly of measures to cut public spending and to increase

  labour market flexibility, targeting welfare programmes, public sector

  employment and pay, employment protection legislation and wage setting

  institutions. Low educated women are more vulnerable to job insecurity

  and low pay, and on the other hand their employment participation is

  more likely to be influenced by welfare measures supportive of female

  employment and so more likely to be affected if these change.

  This paper focuses on the impact of the crisis and the associated

  austerity measures on the patterns and quality of employment of women,

  and how the crisis and changes to employment regulation and welfare

  provision affected the employment and living conditions of women, the

  family arrangements and gender relations in Southern European regions,

  using Andalucia as a case study.

  To this end, a systematic review of the reforms implemented is

  discussed, together with their macro-level impact, through an analysis

  of secondary sources and official statistical data. Statistical data

  used in the analysis includes data on GDP, employment and working

  conditions from Spanish Regional Accounts, Spanish Labour Force Survey,

  Quarterly Labour Cost Survey and statistics on Collective Agreements;

  data on formal and informal care are from the Statistics on Income and

  Living Conditions; data on attitudes are taken from the European Social

  Survey, and the last Eurobarometer special report on gender equality. At

  the micro level, in order to understand the kind of pressures and

  challenges created by the crisis and the austerity reforms, interviews

  were conducted with 66 low educated women employed.

  The findings reveal great precariousness, insecurity and adverse changes

  experienced during the crisis, in spite of a strong added worker effect

  of women increasing their labour market participation in response to

  male unemployment. Women joined the labour market as men lost jobs but

  faced increasing barriers to securing employment. The evidence suggests

  that low educated women met even greater difficulties in accessing,

  maintaining and re-entering employment. Reforms in employment regulation

  and collective bargaining seemed to strongly affect the interviewees,

  who reported poor labour practices and employer unilateralism. Legal

  changes that increased firms'' discretion to change workers'' tasks,

  location and schedules led to a growth of precarious work and to

  employers'' abusing part-time work contracts to reduce costs by replacing

  full-time workers with part-timers paid at lower rates and by pressuring

  part-timers to work longer unpaid hours (Rocha, 2014). Legal changes

  also created opportunities for firms to opt out from collective

  agreements and unilaterally reduce wages. Temporary contracts and

  part-time contracts were all typical of women starting working for their

  present companies during the crisis. Many women reported increases in

  working time, wage freezing or pay cuts. The women working in social

  care consistently reported employer strategies to intensify work and

  reduce labour costs, including the reorganization of work with fewer and

  longer shifts in order to operate with less staff and the hiring of

  hourly paid staff to avoid paying premium night shift rates.

  A significant proportion of women reported that their husbands had been

  unemployed or had pay cuts, resulting in a significant income loss.

  These experiences of unemployment and reduced earnings of the women or

  their husbands were associated with significant financial stress, mainly

  in the cases of couples with children. When asked how they coped and

  eventually overcame the financial hardship, they reported to have

  drastically reduced expenses. Cohabitation is another familialistic

  trait that continues alive and helped families to cushion the economic

  impact of the crisis. Under these circumstances, the women interviewed

  saw their wages as extremely important to the household budget.

  This study provides also some insights on the strategies used by women

  to reconcile waged work with family life in the context of the crisis.

  Women with young children used formal childcare, either school or

  nursery. However, as schools usually finish before their job ended,

  there is a need for complementary arrangements. Some women worked

  part-time hours or on a reduced schedule, whereas others were aided by

  their own or partners'' mothers. Husbands or partners were also involved

  but mostly those who were unemployed. Full-time working women appeared

  to face increasing difficulties in balancing work with family due to

  longer and less predictable working hours during the crisis, and cuts

  introduced to public childcare funding. This was particularly

  problematic for mothers but in general women struggled to combine their

  full-time schedules with domestic work, which still fell mostly on their

  shoulders.

  The gender division of domestic labour remained mostly traditional,

  though younger women tended to report more egalitarian sharing of

  domestic labour. There is evidence of a modest move toward a greater

  contribution of unemployed male couples. The interviewees'' discourse on

  the importance of employment for women''s economic independence and

  linking it to notions of fairness and egalitarianism suggests that

  women''s attachment to employment is increasingly strong. Women''s

  employment position appears more constrained by unfavourable labour

  market circumstances than by traditional gender role attitudes.

  This lack of evidence of a general backlash in gender attitudes, a

  strong women''s attachment to employment and income contributions to the

  household becoming even more crucial during the crisis may signal an

  erosion of the gendered pattern of labour market segmentation. This

  erosion may not represent a dramatic change. It will depend in the

  duration of this process, and in the way out of the crisis. As reforms

  to social welfare and to the regulation of employment have decreased

  women''s ability to reconcile their family and work responsibilities, and

  Southern European regions, such as Andalucia, have implemented a

  strategy of retrenchment through drastic cuts in the welfare state,

  austerity may create the conditions to the re-emergence of a more

  conservative gender order.'
affiliation: 'Rodriguez-Modrono, P (Corresponding Author), Univ Pablo de Olavide,
  Seville, Spain.

  Rodriguez-Modrono, Paula, Univ Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain.'
author: Rodriguez-Modrono, Paula
author_list:
- family: Rodriguez-Modrono
  given: Paula
da: '2023-09-28'
files: []
issn: 0213-7585
journal: REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS REGIONALES
keywords: Gender; Employment; Economic crieis; Social model
keywords-plus: SPAIN; POLICIES; RECESSION; POSITION; DENMARK; GREECE; FAMILY
language: Spanish
month: SEP-DEC
number: '110'
number-of-cited-references: '39'
orcid-numbers: Rodríguez-Modroño, Paula/0000-0002-0724-0248
pages: 15-37
papis_id: 4c43faa40af1b76860f5764758470a6c
ref: Rodriguezmodrono2017impactseconomic
researcherid-numbers: Rodríguez-Modroño, Paula/G-6238-2014
times-cited: '1'
title: Impacts of the economic crisis on employed women in Southern European Regions.
  The case of Andalucia
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000434068600001
usage-count-last-180-days: '1'
usage-count-since-2013: '12'
web-of-science-categories: Environmental Studies
year: '2017'