Med denna vetenskapliga essä presenterar jag först situationer ur det praktiska arbetet i förskolan och reflekterar sedan över dessa situationer med hjälp av bland annat tidigare forskning, barnkonventionen och läroplanen. Mitt dilemma handlar om hur jag som pedagog förhåller mig till barns skiftande vistelsetider och hur mitt arbete kring föräldrasamverkan och läroplanen ser ut. Å ena sidan vill jag redogöra för allt det positiva med förskolans verksamhet, men å andra sidan vill jag inte försumma föräldrarnas viktiga roll för barnen. Syftet med essän är att undersöka hur jag som pedagog påverkar föräldrarna och deras barns vistelsetider med hjälp av bland annat förskolans läroplan. Denna essä handlar även om hur läroplanen förväntas användas för att höja förskolans status inför föräldrar och samhälle. Jag belyser även hur läroplanen kan användas i samverkan mellan hem och förskola och reflekterar över dess för och nackdelar. Reflektionerna i essän tar även upp de förväntningar som finns i samhället, att barnen ska tillbringa mycket tid i förskolan för att de ska vara väl förberedda inför skolstart. Jag nämner och reflekterar även över de barn som knappt spenderar någon tid alls i förskolan. Jag lyfter mina egna värderingar från min berättelse som jag kopplar ihop med anknytningsteorin och utifrån den reflekterar jag över barnens vistelsetider i förskolan redan från låg ålder. Läroplanen är under ett skifte och jag jämför delar från den äldre läroplanen med delar från den nya läroplanen som handlar om samverkan mellan hem och förskola. I min slutsats framkommer att läroplanen är tolkningsbar och i vissa avseenden även otydlig, vilket i sig gör att det kan bli problematiskt i arbetet med föräldrasamverkan. Dilemmat över hur förskolan presenteras inför föräldrarna kan, utifrån min slutsats, även grunda sig i brist på andra styrdokument som kan erbjuda en bredare grund att som pedagog luta sig tillbaka mot. / With this scientific essay, I first present situations from the practical work in preschool and then reflect on these situations with the help of, among others, previous research, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the curriculum. My dilemma concerns the way in which I, as an educator, deal with children's changing residence times and how my work with parental collaboration and the curriculum looks like. On the one hand, I want to describe all the positive things about the preschool's activities, but on the other hand I do not want to neglect the parents' important role for the children. The purpose of the essay is to investigate how I, as an educator, affect the parents and their children's residence times by means of, among other things, the preschool's curriculum. This essay also considers how the curriculum is expected to be used in elevating the preschool's status for the parents and society. I also highlight how the curriculum can be used in the collaboration between home and preschool and reflect on its pros and cons. The reflections also address the expectations that exist in society, according to which the children should spend a lot of time in preschool in order for them to be well prepared for school start. I even scrutinize my own values ​​from the situations, which I associate with attachment theory, and, on the basis of that, I reflect on the residence times in preschool of children of very young age. The curriculum is currently undergoing a shift and I compare the paragraphs on the collaboration between home and preschool from the old curriculum with those from the new curriculum. In my conclusion, it is revealed that the curriculum is interpretable and, in some respects, also unclear, which in itself means that it can become problematic for parental collaboration. Based on my conclusion, the dilemma over how the preschool is presented to the parents could be founded on a lack of other governing documents that would offer a broader basis for pedagogues to rely on.

This theoretic-empiric thesis concerns the transformation of parent's leisure time taking parental leave, analyzes the leisure time of parents who decided to stay at home with children. Thesis focuses on factors most affecting the leisure time and primarily look on effect coming from change of social role itself. Additionally brings research of parent's leisure activities and the effect of change of leisure behavior on other areas of family life during the parental leave. Research tries to expose signification of the leisure time in this critical family time period as well as effect on parents through the parental leave. The theoretical base was created with collecting sources concerning leisure time area, social role change, parental leave and its application on particular field of leisure time change. Results of thesis coming from qualitative research based on qualitative analysis of a couple deeper dialogs moderated according to research strategy - methods anchored theory and application on contemporary knowledge.

This thesis consists of four empirical studies on women and men in European labour markets. Study I examines effects of the sex of the immediate supervisor on the time men and women spend in initial on-the-job training (OJT) in Sweden. The results show that men receive longer initial OJT than women do, but men’s time in training is independent of the supervisor’s sex. For women in the private sector, the chances of receiving long initial OJT are higher if the immediate supervisor is a man. Study II analyses effects of labour market institutions on the quality of part-time work by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time jobs in Britain and Sweden. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantages when compared to female full-time workers. Study III examines associations between maternal employment policies and wage penalties for mothers by skill in 10 European countries. The results indicate that, net of variation in female labour force participation, extensive publicly funded childcare is associated with a modest decrease in the motherhood wage penalty, regardless of skill. By contrast, paid maternity leave is weakly associated with a larger motherhood wage gap in less skilled jobs only. Study IV examines the extent to which women’s opportunities to attain positions of high workplace authority are related to maternal employment policies, such as paid parental leave and part-time work. Based on data from 25 European countries, the results show that a high proportion of women working long part-time hours is associated with a wider gender gap in the attainment of high authority positions, to the disadvantage of women. However, paid parental leave appears to be unrelated to the gender authority gap. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: In press. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.

As a point of departure, this thesis is motivated by the big changes which have taken place in most Western European countries since the 1970s, with an increase in female labour market participation and, to some extent, men’s increased share of the domestic work. There is also a debate as to whether France, having a fairly extensive family support,should be categorised as closer to the Scandinavian countries or together with countries with more restrictive family policy such as Italy and Germany, and thus belonging to the conservative regime cluster as defined by Gösta Esping-Andersen. The major topic of this thesis concerns what expectations parents have on childcare and how they experience the combination of care of children and participation in paid work. Two studies, based on quantitative macro-data, analyse and compare differences in primarily women’s employment in relation to family policy measures. The studies concern in addition to France and Sweden, also Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom. The results indicate that the extensive family support system brings France closer to the Scandinavian countries. However, results based on 80 interviews made with 40 French and 40 Swedish families in the three following studies indicate that this may not be the case concerning factors like attitudes and values about the care of children and the reconciliation of work and family. Results indicate that values expressed in the French families point to a strong connection with values significant for countries in the conservative regime cluster. Major findings are that in the reconciliation of work and family, Swedes experience role stress more than French people, and in particular Swedish fathers. In France, on the other hand, mothers strongly express a feeling of dissatisfaction with their partner’s lack of participation in the household work. Regarding the attitudes to the paid parental leave (allocation parentale d’éducation- APE), French families’ arguments reflect that the policy does not promote fathers’ use of paid parental leave, and French mothers more than Swedish mothers refer to the weaker labour market situation as a reason for their use of the leave. Concerning expectations on childcare, French families more than Swedish families stress the importance of ‘upbringing,’ ‘learning’ and ‘socialisation,’ whereas Swedish families emphasise ‘pedagogy’ and that the staff recognises the individual child.

La conciliabilità lavorativa è un nodo complesso del nostro tempo, che fatica ad essere sciolto. Non si tratta di un problema individuale da risolvere a livello personale, quanto piuttosto di una tematica a rilevanza societaria che richiede pertanto un intreccio virtuoso di progettazione politica, intervento legislativo e misure aziendali a supporto. La questione tuttavia, non si gioca solo a livello istituzionale. Come mostrato dal presente lavoro di ricerca, infatti, lavoratori e le lavoratrici si trovano ad essere, in un quadro di generale incertezza, attori protagonisti di un lento e difficoltoso processo di trasformazione sociale e organizzativa che richiede un consenso unanime ed un accordo trasversale, pena la sua incompiutezza e contraddittorietà. Da qui l'importanza di chiarire e mettere in luce le differenti, e a volte contrapposte, valenze che il tema assume tra i diversi protagonisti del mondo del lavoro e mostrare come le relazioni personali e lavorative, familiari e di coppia, intervengano nella definizione e nell'utilizzo delle misure di conciliazione. / Work-life integration is a complicated knot of our society, difficult to be undone. It is not a personal problem to be solved individually; rather it is a social issue and therefore needs a coherent mix of policy, legislation, organizational measures. Anyway the institutional level is not enough. Actually, as this work shows, men and women are the main characters of a slow and tough process of social and organizational change that requires the agreement of all the parties concerned. Thus it is important to make clear the different, and sometimes contrary, meanings of work-life integration among subjects acting in the labour market and to show how family, gender and labour relationships affect the definition and usage of work-life balance benefits.

This thesis analyzes the right to reconcile work and family responsibilities which is recognized as crucial in women&amp / #8223 / s participation in the labor market. When women can not fully enjoy their right to work due to the burden of unequal gender division of labor, they become more vulnerable to poverty and male violence which impede them from developing their basic human capabilities. States should acknowledge that this is a human rights problem which is deriving from women&amp / #8223 / s overburden as primary caregivers. In order to overcome this problem and transform the patriarchal structure of the market and the family / state intervention in the private sphere is required. Two alternative reconciliation models are examined. The first is the equality driven model that encompasses parental leave and childcare facilities, which necessitate positive intervention of the state and more likely to trigger structural change. The other is the flexibility or market driven model which is based on part-time work and homeworking strategies. They target women&amp / #8223 / s participation in the labor market without necessarily leading to any change in the gender divisionof labor. The effectiveness of these strategies is analyzed within a feminist jurisprudence method. While the focus is on the international framework, including the EU Member States, the specific case of Turkey is also considered. Given Turkey&amp / #8223 / s socio-economic particularities, childcare largely depends on kinship relations and social policies regulating women&amp / #8223 / s labor market participation are market driven. The data shows that women in Turkey do not equally enjoy their economic and social rights. Therefore, by examining the international framework for right to reconcile work and family responsibilities, it is hoped that a case can be made to call on Turkey to abide by its international obligations to grant this right.

My dissertation consists of three essays on the Korean labor market. The first essay studies how the extensive provision of maternity leave and childcare leave in Korea affects the employment and wages of young women. This reform is expected to increase the labor supply and decrease the labor demand for young women. As a result, the mean wage of young women should fall. But the direction of the change in their employment probability is hard to infer because it depends on the relative magnitudes of the shifts of the labor supply and demand curves. A difference-in-difference-in-differences model having older women, older men, and young men simultaneously as the control group suggests that neither the employment nor the hourly wages of young women are affected. The second essay explores why married men have higher hourly earnings and employment propensity than otherwise comparable single men. In a fixed effects regression, which controls for the selection of more productive men into marriage, married men do not experience faster growth in earnings and employment rate before marriage. Rather, when marriage takes place, the earnings of married men start increasing relative to those of single men. Also, that South Korean men have a greater earnings growth after marriage than U.S. men is consistent with the national difference in the degree of specialization within married households. Married men are more likely to work than single men only for the first few years of marriage, and single men outperform married men afterwards. The final essay studies why gender differences in earnings and earnings growth exist among new Korean college graduates before women take time off of work for marriage and motherhood. I find that women do not face an initial earnings gap after graduating college compared to men who finished military service. The lower earnings that women receive can be entirely explained by the difference in age at graduation between men and women. However, women's earnings grow slower than those of men who finished military service. This is partly because a greater percentage of women graduate from colleges of education, which provide slower earnings growth than other types of colleges. Most of the gender difference in earnings growth remains unexplained. / text

Parental leave is a broad term that encompasses maternity and/or paternity leave to care for an infant. Parental leave provides job protection for workers and may be paid or unpaid, with provisions varying throughout the world. Every industrialized nation offers some form of paid parental leave, with the exception of the United States, whose only federal policy regarding parental leave is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a law that allows eligible workers to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid, job protected leave for the birth or adoption of a child. This research project explored how parents understand and navigate the process of parental leave in the United States, and, using an anthropological perspective, situated these narratives into the overall framework of parental leave policy and use in this country. Data were collected through surveys (N=32) and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with expectant parents, most of whom were expecting their first child (N=20). The results of this study found that parental leave is valued, especially for the purposes of bonding and establishing breastfeeding. Parents were grateful for the length of leave they were able to take, but many would have liked to have a longer leave. Their decisions on whether to use parental leave were shaped by cultural norms relating to gender and worker roles within society, and also the ways in which parents embodied their role as mother or father. Parents also faced a complex situation regarding the availability and accessibility of parental leave within their workplace. While some parents had the option of taking job-protected leave under the FMLA, they did not feel that the leave was accessible, either because they could not afford unpaid leave, or because they feared that taking more leave than what was considered to be the norm in their workplace would have a detrimental impact on their career.

Cette thèse compare deux pays dont les niveaux de fécondité sont très différents et se pose la question de savoir dans quelle mesure les dispositifs des politiques familiales, et notamment les mesures qui permettent aux femmes de concilier activité professionnelle et vie familiale expliquent cette différence. Les deux pays ont en effet en commun de consacrer proportionnellement un même pourcentage de leur PIB pour soutenir les familles. Or la conciliation entre vie familiale et vie professionnelle est différemment soutenue. Tandis qu’en France les dispositifs et les modes de gardes pour les enfants d’âge préscolaire permettent une rapide reprise de l’activité professionnelle pour les femmes après une naissance, en Hongrie c’est une longue interruption de cette activité qui est soutenue avec les allocations-interruption. Ce système, hérité des années 1960-1990 influence la durée de l’inactivité des femmes qui est en moyenne de 4,7 ans après une naissance. Les mentalités soutiennent d’ailleurs ce mode de fonctionnement puisque les normes sociales préconisent en Hongrie la garde maternelle avant l’âge de trois ans des enfants. Ces normes sont toutefois en train de changer, les femmes jeunes étant plus permissives et souhaitant travailler plus rapidement après une naissance. La quasi obligation de quitter le marché du travail après une naissance a comme résultat que le statut professionnel influence significativement la réalisation des intentions de fécondité en Hongrie tandis qu’en France, en conséquence d’une plus grande neutralité des politiques familiales, le statut professionnel joue moins sur ces intentions dont la réalisation est d’ailleurs plus fréquente. / This dissertation compares two countries in which the level of fertility is very different and explores to which extent these differences can be explained with current family policy measures and in particular with measures that permit women to reconcile employment and family life. Both countries devote the same proportion of their GDP to families, but they support the reconciliation between work and family life differently. While in France the measures and the childcare facilities for children below three allow women to resume work quickly after a birth, long career interruptions are supported in Hungary. The measures, inherited from the era of state-socialism, have an important impact on the duration of career interruptions of women: after a birth, the mean length of these interruptions is about 4.7 years.At the meantime people’s mentality supports this organisation of family life after a birth since social norms require maternal childcare until the age of three. Yet, these norms are changing and younger women are more permissive and wish to resume work more quickly. The almost obligation to take up parental leave after a birth means that women’s employment status has a significant effect on the realisation of fertility intentions in Hungary. In France, on the contrary, as a result of the more neutral family policy, employment status has less effect on the realisation of fertility intentions, and moreover, these intentions are more often realised than in Hungary.

This diploma thesis deals with the problems of combining a family and working life from the point of view of a woman. The main objective set for the thesis was to determine whether women and mothers give precedence to working or family life and which means help them to harmonise their family and working life. Two research questions were determined for the diploma thesis. The first research question is interested in whether and how women manage to combine their working and family life and the second research question relates to the possibilities and obstacles which mothers experience whilst implementing their preferences in the field of family, work and their coordination. The theoretical part of the diploma thesis deals with the current situation in the field of work and family and attempts to coordinate them. Description is provided here of the preferences and ideas women have in the field of employment and the family and the problems of gender, above all gender stereotypes are also described here. The second chapter relates to family policy which currently exists in the Czech Republic. Mention is made here of the development of family policy and also the current situation and the system of social welfare benefits, where benefits are described in more detail. An important area in the problems of harmonisation of family and career is the standing of women on the job market. This chapter of the thesis is focused on the theory of human capital, the standing of women on the job market, working conditions for women, pregnant employees and mothers and last but not least, mention is also made here of discrimination, which may accompany women when they return to the job market after parental leave. Whilst harmonising their family and career, women very often make use of the offer of services relating to childcare for pre-schoolers. The last chapter in the diploma thesis concerns Catherine Hakim?s preference theory. The method chosen for the empirical part of the diploma thesis was enquiry using a semi-structured interview. Six questions were set in advance for the interview with mothers, these being focused on whether family or career is more important for women, which means women use when trying to coordinate their family and working life, whether their ideas relating to these problems correspond to the reality of the situation and whether mothers have encountered any form of discrimination when entering the job market or when returning to work after maternity leave. The last part of the prepared interview related to whether mothers use any services providing care for pre-schoolers and whether mothers have any sort of division of work in the family and whether this division suits them. The survey was participated in by women up to the age of 40 living in the Tábor district at the time of the survey. These women are either divorced, married or living with a boyfriend and have at least one child. Selection of women for participation in the survey took place using the snowball sampling method and the sample of women was thus taken in such a way as to ensure that it is representative. The results of the survey showed that women definitely give precedence to their family and children. All seven women asked agreed on this claim. Even if their preferences were different before the birth, and some wanted to have a professional career, they certainly do not regret it and are happy with their current life.