abstract: 'Many cross-national studies of welfare states and gender inequality

  report adverse effects of work-family policies on women''s labor market

  outcomes. Countries with generous work-family policies tend to have a

  lower proportion of women in positions of authority and greater

  occupational sex segregation than countries without such policies. In

  order to explain this paradox, scholars have argued that work-family

  policies may create incentives for employers to exclude women from

  well-paying jobs. This argument, however, has been left untested due to

  the absence of firm-level data on promotions. This paper seeks to make

  both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to this literature. At

  the theoretical level, we argue that the effect of work-family policies

  is contingent upon labor market context and organizational practices,

  which shape employers'' incentives or disincentives to implement

  work-family policies to more fully utilize female workers. Empirically,

  we use over-time firm-level data to test how government policy

  interventions in Japan to increase work-family benefits have affected

  female promotion rates in private companies. Analyzing changes in

  women''s promotion rates across 1000 large companies from 1987 to 2009,

  we find evidence that employers have tended to promote more, not fewer,

  women subsequent to policy interventions. Additionally, employers who

  provided more generous work family benefits promoted more women. Our

  findings point to the importance of labor market context in structuring

  employers'' incentives to leverage work-family policy reforms to utilize

  skilled female labor. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.'
affiliation: 'Mun, E (Corresponding Author), Amherst Coll, 165 South Pleasant St,202
  Morgan Hall, Amherst, MA 01002 USA.

  Mun, Eunmi, Univ Illinois, Chicago, IL 60680 USA.

  Brinton, Mary C., Harvard Univ, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.'
author: Mun, Eunmi and Brinton, Mary C.
author-email: 'emun@amherst.edu

  brinton@wjh.harvard.edu'
author_list:
- family: Mun
  given: Eunmi
- family: Brinton
  given: Mary C.
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2016.03.004
eissn: 1878-5654
files: []
issn: 0276-5624
journal: RESEARCH IN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY
keywords: 'Work-family policies; Labor market institutions; Japan; Organizations

  and inequality'
keywords-plus: 'ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACH; GENDER EQUALITY; LOW FERTILITY; INEQUALITY;

  EMPLOYMENT; POLICIES; WORK; COUNTRIES; LEAVE; MOTHERS'
language: English
month: FEB
number: SI
number-of-cited-references: '88'
pages: 33-43
papis_id: c5c6b2cbb6f12e5dc2ad9b9d945e4fff
ref: Mun2017revisitingwelfare
times-cited: '5'
title: 'Revisiting the welfare state paradox: A firm-level analysis from Japan'
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:000394919500004
usage-count-last-180-days: '2'
usage-count-since-2013: '30'
volume: '47'
web-of-science-categories: Sociology
year: '2017'