Work and Family Policy

Stephen Sweet is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ithaca College, USA, and is a visiting scholar at the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, USA. He has published widely on work-family concerns in a wide range of journals including Work & Occupations, Marriage and Family, Family Relations, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Generations, and Community, Work & Family. Recent publications include Changing Contours of Work (2008, with Peter Meiksins) and The Work and Family Handbook (2006, with Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes and Ellen Ernst Kossek). His current research focuses on the intersecting concerns of job security, talent retention, and the aging of the workforce.

Introduction: Work and Family Policy: International Comparative Perspectives Stephen Sweet 1. The impact of work-family policies on women’s employment: a review of research from OECD countries Ariane Hegewisch & Janet C. Gornick 2. Work-family policies and the effects of children on women’s employment hours and wages Joya Misra, Michelle Budig & Irene Boeckmann 3. Rethinking the paradox: tradeoffs in work-family policy and patterns of gender inequality Hadas Mandel 4. Fathers’ rights to paid parental leave in the Nordic countries: consequences for the gendered division of leave Linda Haas & Tine Rostgaard 5. Family policies in developed countries: a ‘fertility-booster’ with side-effects Olivier Thévenon & Anne H. Gauthier 6. Differences in women’s employment patterns and family policies: eastern and western Germany Birgit Pfau-Effinger & Maike Smidt 7. ‘It was just too hard to come back’: unintended policy impacts on work-family balance in the Australian and Canadian non-profit social services Donna Baines 8. Flexibility implementation to a global workforce: a case study of Merck and Company, Inc. Lori A. Muse