The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of working women when they announce their pregnancies, take maternity leave, transition back to work, and utilize flexible work policies. Using a qualitative methodology, transcripts of in-depth interviews were analyzed utilizing a life history approach. Key findings of the study are that women perceive more negative responses to the announcement of their pregnancies than positive ones. In terms of maternity and parental leave policies, all the participants had access to these benefits. Women found issues with financial adequacy, administration, and duration of these policies. Mothers found that financial support from the Canadian government was inadequate to allow them to take the full duration of the 52-week maternity and parental leave for which they were eligible. In addition, employer “top-up” payments were limited and administrative details of maternity leave were often not discussed fully with pregnant workers. When women returned to work, they found that workplaces did not offer resources such as a phased-in return to work or personnel to help them re-engage with their prior work projects. Women discussed the challenges of managing their dual roles of worker and mother and found that managers and coworkers put them in a mommy mould which lessened the quality of their assignments. New mothers found that they had difficultly juggling their work and home responsibilities, finding time for themselves, and receiving increased domestic support from their spouses. While some workplaces offered women flexible workplace policies, not all mothers chose to access them as they found these policies often negatively impacted their career progression. Other issues were a lack of flexible workplace policy transparency, inconsistent manager support, and difficulty maintaining a flexible schedule. Findings have major implications for an improved response from managers upon pregnancy announcement, improved dialogue among employers about increasing “top up” maternity leave pay to new mothers, developing a formal transition plan for new mothers returning to the workplace, and expanding the use of flexible workplace policies.

Text in English / The transition from traditional to non-traditional marital roles was brought about by changes in the political, social and economic spheres. Within this transition, a new family arrangement has emerged in which traditional marital roles of breadwinning husband and care-giving, nurturer-wife are replaced by a breadwinning wife and a care-giving, nurturer-husband, the so-called stay-at-home husband. Various factors contributed and necessitated this change in marital roles, such as, but not limited to, the feminist movement, the economic recession, changes in legislation, retrenchments and so forth. However, making this transition is not easy. These couples, fulfilling non-traditional marital roles, are faced with stigmatisation and negative attitudes that make them want to conceal their marital roles from family, friends, the community and society as a whole. This state of affairs results in a situation where these couples stay in the closet and as consequence the topic is ill-researched and ripe for further investigation. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study explored and described the challenges, experiences and coping resources of couples fulfilling non-traditional marital roles in order to propose practice guidelines to support these couples from a social work perspective. A total of ten couples participated in the study. Independently, the working wives and stay-at-home husbands provided separate accounts of realities related to fulfilling the non-traditional marital roles within their respective marital relationships. Themes that emerged from the in-depth description of their experiences reflected the benefits accrued, the challenges experienced, their needs and coping resources. From the information provided suggestions were derived for social workers to assist couples in a similar working wife and stay-at-home husband marriage set-up to deal with situations encountered. In consulting extant literature, research on this phenomenon appeared to be totally neglected both internationally and nationally. Hence this study sought to address this lacuna by specifically investigating the situation in South Africa. It also appeared that existing research tended to focus on either the stay-at-home mother or the dual career family. Research on the experiences of stay-at-home husbands was thus severely lacking as were ways in which such couples in these roles could be supported. Therefore, making use of the ecological and role theory perspectives, attention is given to exposing their experiences, challenges and coping resources with a view to developing practice guidelines for helping social work practitioners to adequately support these couples practising non-traditional marital roles. / Social Work / Ph. D. (Social Work)

The transition from traditional to non-traditional marital roles was brought about by changes in the political, social and economic spheres. Within this transition, a new family arrangement has emerged in which traditional marital roles of breadwinning husband and care-giving, nurturer-wife are replaced by a breadwinning wife and a care-giving, nurturer-husband, the so-called stay-at-home husband. Various factors contributed and necessitated this change in marital roles, such as, but not limited to, the feminist movement, the economic recession, changes in legislation, retrenchments and so forth. However, making this transition is not easy. These couples, fulfilling non-traditional marital roles, are faced with stigmatisation and negative attitudes that make them want to conceal their marital roles from family, friends, the community and society as a whole. This state of affairs results in a situation where these couples stay in the closet and as consequence the topic is ill-researched and ripe for further investigation. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study explored and described the challenges, experiences and coping resources of couples fulfilling non-traditional marital roles in order to propose practice guidelines to support these couples from a social work perspective. A total of ten couples participated in the study. Independently, the working wives and stay-at-home husbands provided separate accounts of realities related to fulfilling the non-traditional marital roles within their respective marital relationships. Themes that emerged from the in-depth description of their experiences reflected the benefits accrued, the challenges experienced, their needs and coping resources. From the information provided suggestions were derived for social workers to assist couples in a similar working wife and stay-at-home husband marriage set-up to deal with situations encountered. In consulting extant literature, research on this phenomenon appeared to be totally neglected both internationally and nationally. Hence this study sought to address this lacuna by specifically investigating the situation in South Africa. It also appeared that existing research tended to focus on either the stay-at-home mother or the dual career family. Research on the experiences of stay-at-home husbands was thus severely lacking as were ways in which such couples in these roles could be supported. Therefore, making use of the ecological and role theory perspectives, attention is given to exposing their experiences, challenges and coping resources with a view to developing practice guidelines for helping social work practitioners to adequately support these couples practising non-traditional marital roles. / Social Work / Ph. D. (Social Work)

The general focus of this thesis is on how the family, work and the welfare system are intertwined. A major determinant is the way responsibilities are shared by the state, the market and civil society in different welfare state regimes. An introductory chapter will therefore be dedicated to the development of the social dimension in the process of European integration. A first chapter will then go deeper into the comparative analysis of welfare state regimes, to comment on the provision of welfare in societies with a different mix of state, market and societal welfare roles and to assess the adequacy of existing typologies as reflections of today’s changed socio-economic, political and gender reality. Although they stand strong on their own, these first two chapters also contribute to contextualising the research subject of the remainder of the thesis: the study and comparison of the differential situation of women and men and of mothers and non-mothers on the labour markets of the EU-15 countries as well as of the role of public policies with respect to the employment penalties faced by women, particularly in the presence of young children. In our analysis, employment penalties are understood in three ways: (i) the difference in full-time equivalent employment rates between mothers and non-mothers, (ii) the wage penalty associated with motherhood, and (iii) the wage gap between part-time and full-time workers, considering men and women separately. Besides from a gender point of view, employment outcomes and public policies are thus assessed comparatively for mothers and non-mothers. Because women choose to take part in paid employment, fertility rates will depend on their possibilities to combine employment and motherhood. As a result, motherhood-induced employment penalties and the role of public policies to tackle them should be given priority attention, not just by scholars, but also by politicians and policy-makers. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis examined husband immobility and the international migration of married women from Zimbabwe. Data was collected from husbands and wives in married couple households where the wife had migrated alone. Face-to-face semi structured interviews were conducted with migrant women’s husbands in Zimbabwe while migrant women were interviewed in countries of destination telephonically. Empirical results showed that migrant women and their husbands were middle aged. Preferred countries of destination were in the region and the United Kingdom. Having a wife’s own social contacts in the preferred destination encouraged migration by reducing financial and emotional costs. Husbands' immobility facilitated wifely migration. Many wives exercised agency in migration decision making with more wives than husbands having initiated the discussion on migration. There were also cases of joint and wife sole decision making. With a few exceptions decision making was consensual. The women migrated as a survival strategy. In several households remittances were the primary source of income. Husbands were the main recipients of remittances. Some wives gave instructions on how the remittances should be used. Overall, remittances were used for paying fees, buying assets and for household upkeep. Some of the women had not visited their families since their migration. The physical separation of spouses had caused emotional distress in some marital relationships. The majority of respondents cited loss of consortium as a major problem. / Sociology / D. Phil.

This thesis examined husband immobility and the international migration of married women from Zimbabwe. Data was collected from husbands and wives in married couple households where the wife had migrated alone. Face-to-face semi structured interviews were conducted with migrant women’s husbands in Zimbabwe while migrant women were interviewed in countries of destination telephonically. Empirical results showed that migrant women and their husbands were middle aged. Preferred countries of destination were in the region and the United Kingdom. Having a wife’s own social contacts in the preferred destination encouraged migration by reducing financial and emotional costs. Husbands' immobility facilitated wifely migration. Many wives exercised agency in migration decision making with more wives than husbands having initiated the discussion on migration. There were also cases of joint and wife sole decision making. With a few exceptions decision making was consensual. The women migrated as a survival strategy. In several households remittances were the primary source of income. Husbands were the main recipients of remittances. Some wives gave instructions on how the remittances should be used. Overall, remittances were used for paying fees, buying assets and for household upkeep. Some of the women had not visited their families since their migration. The physical separation of spouses had caused emotional distress in some marital relationships. The majority of respondents cited loss of consortium as a major problem. / Sociology / D. Phil.