There has been increasingly interest in parental leave policies as instruments for the implementation of gender equality in society. This review essay explores the link between parental leave policies and the gender division of labour - referring to both paid employment and unpaid family work. Against this backdrop the essay systematically reviews evidence from quantitative empirical research on the effects of parental leave policies on mothers' employment and fathers' involvement in family work. The article suggests that there are several aspects of parental leave that seem to be especially relevant for the gender division of labour, such as the duration of leave, the provision of payments, and an individual entitlement of non-transferable leave rights. In a concluding section the article summarizes the results, discusses doubts and questions raised by the material and identifies promising areas of future research that are crucial for a better understanding of the effects of parental leave on the gender division of labour. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Institut für Sozialpolitik

There has been increasingly interest in parental leave policies as instruments for the implementation of gender equality in society. This review essay explores the link between parental leave policies and the gender division of labour - referring to both paid employment and unpaid family work. Against this backdrop the essay systematically reviews evidence from quantitative empirical research on the effects of parental leave policies on mothers' employment and fathers' involvement in family work. The article suggests that there are several aspects of parental leave that seem to be especially relevant for the gender division of labour, such as the duration of leave, the provision of payments, and an individual entitlement of non-transferable leave rights. In a concluding section the article summarizes the results, discusses doubts and questions raised by the material and identifies promising areas of future research that are crucial for a better understanding of the effects of parental leave on the gender division of labour. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Institut für Sozialpolitik

During the first two thirds of the 20th century, electricity, running water, and a host of new consumer durables diffused into most American homes. These new household technologies revolutionized domestic life by freeing up time from basic housework. In this dissertation, I study the consequences of household technological change on families, focusing on fertility, child health, marriage, and female labour force participation. Chapter 1 provides a short history of household modernization. I then present an econometric framework for evaluating the effects of household technological change, and discuss the main estimation challenges. To address these issues, I introduce an estimation strategy based on a newly-assembled dataset that captures the rollout of the U.S. power grid during the mid-20th century. In chapter 2, I study the impact of household technological change on fertility and child health, exploiting substantial cross-county and cross-state variation in the timing of when households acquired new consumer durables. Modern household technologies led families to make a child quantity-quality tradeoff favouring quality: household modernization is associated with decreases in infant mortality and decreases in fertility. The declines in infant mortality were particularly large in states where households had relied heavily on coal for heating and cooking, where the potential to improve indoor air quality was greatest. Health improvements were also larger in states that had previously invested heavily in maternal education, suggesting that household modernization led parents to provide better infant care. Overall, household technological change can account for between 25% and 30% of the total decline in infant mortality between 1930 and 1960. In chapter 3, I examine the relationship between household modernization, investment in children, and female employment. I present a conceptual framework in which household technological change has little immediate impact on female employment, but generates increased investment in daughters' human capital, ultimately causing a rise in employment for subsequent cohorts of women. I find empirical support for these predictions. Further, the results suggest that the diffusion of modern technology into the home during the first half of the 20th century can account for a significant fraction of the rise in female employment after 1950.

This study investigated problems experienced by women re-entering into the education profession by focusing on: • The nature and scope of re-entry by women into the education profession; • the features and problems experienced by women on re-entering the education profession; • the problems women educators experience on re-entering the education profession in the North West Province. To achieve these goals, both an empirical survey and a survey of literature was conducted. The study of literature was undertaken consulting primary and secondary sources. After the problems experienced by women re-entering into the education profession were established and discussed, a questionnaire was drafted. From the review of literature, it appeared that the problems experienced by women (i.e. re-entry women) were problems within themselves, in the career and society, as well as problems in the work situation and on management level. A systematic sample was used in which women educators of secondary schools in the North West Province were involved. The empirical investigation indicated that women educators have problems when they re-enter the education profession after a period of absence and that certain problems should be addressed. Problems of high priority are related to the category of problems within women. The categories of problems within the career and the society were indicated as problems of high priority. A problem of low priority for women educators appears to be the role of family caregiver for elderly, sick or disabled relatives who live either in the educator's home or nearby. Also, the age of re-entry women seems to be no problem for re-entry women educators. Certain recommendations are made on the basis of the empirical investigation. The most important recommendations are the provision of childcare facilities such as after-school care, holiday play-schemes, workplace nurseries and an increase in maternity benefits, and the introduction of paternity and childcare leave. The creation of promotion opportunities for women who aspire to educational management positions is also an important recommendation. All women, including re-entry women, should be treated fairly when applying for posts. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2001

This study investigated problems experienced by women re-entering into the education profession by focusing on: • The nature and scope of re-entry by women into the education profession; • the features and problems experienced by women on re-entering the education profession; • the problems women educators experience on re-entering the education profession in the North West Province. To achieve these goals, both an empirical survey and a survey of literature was conducted. The study of literature was undertaken consulting primary and secondary sources. After the problems experienced by women re-entering into the education profession were established and discussed, a questionnaire was drafted. From the review of literature, it appeared that the problems experienced by women (i.e. re-entry women) were problems within themselves, in the career and society, as well as problems in the work situation and on management level. A systematic sample was used in which women educators of secondary schools in the North West Province were involved. The empirical investigation indicated that women educators have problems when they re-enter the education profession after a period of absence and that certain problems should be addressed. Problems of high priority are related to the category of problems within women. The categories of problems within the career and the society were indicated as problems of high priority. A problem of low priority for women educators appears to be the role of family caregiver for elderly, sick or disabled relatives who live either in the educator's home or nearby. Also, the age of re-entry women seems to be no problem for re-entry women educators. Certain recommendations are made on the basis of the empirical investigation. The most important recommendations are the provision of childcare facilities such as after-school care, holiday play-schemes, workplace nurseries and an increase in maternity benefits, and the introduction of paternity and childcare leave. The creation of promotion opportunities for women who aspire to educational management positions is also an important recommendation. All women, including re-entry women, should be treated fairly when applying for posts. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2001

It is generally accepted that the quality of a country's labour force is a crucial factor in successful competition in the global economy. South Africa's richness in human resources unfortunately does not in itself make us a winning nation. Because of the low educational attainment of our labour force, we have to compete in the global economy at a disadvantage. The global labour market is characterised by constant change (benefiting skilled workers) and the progressive destruction of jobs (affecting in particular semiskilled and unskilled workers). The purpose of the study is to investigate the structural changes taking place in the workplace, the effects thereof on the demand for human resources, and how education and training in South Africa can respond to these changes to the benefit of individuals, organisations and the country as a whole. An intensive literature survey cast light on the development of economies, how such development influences the demand for worker skills and how different nations have attempted to meet the requirements of their productive systems through appropriate education and training. South Africa's economy, labour problems and strategies to enhance human capital and create jobs were also examined. Consistent with trends observed in the advanced economies of the world, the pattern of activity in the South African economy has shifted from the primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary and service sectors, shedding jobs requiring lower levels of skills and creating jobs for highly qualified workers. A historical overview of the provision of education and training in South Africa highlights how apartheid policies contributed to vast disparities in the skills levels of the different population groups in South Africa. Many innovative measures to enhance skills levels and job creation have been introduced since 1994 by the democratically elected government. These measures were evidently informed by the experience of other countries. The formidable task of implementing these measures or strategies successfully is exacerbated by the fact that the different provinces in South Africa are in different stages of economic development and have different educational outputs, leading to differences in the skills levels of their respective labour forces. Research on how unemployed people participate in the labour market served as the basis for the empirical input to the study. The data collected in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape were interpreted to ascertain how such people interact with the labour market in these provinces. The survey results revealed that the effects of low educational levels, people's interaction with the labour market, their job interest and the way job creation strategies are implemented may influence the efficacy of strategies to enhance people's skill levels and to create jobs. Factors influencing the demand for labour and factors that may impact on the success of education and training interventions were considered in the construction of a model to prioritise skills formation strategies. The model should be a versatile planning tool for identifying target groups, and for prioritising and implementing skills development strategies in the context of local socio-economic structures, as well as in the context of the national socio-economic structure and the global economy. As proposals for job creation by experts throughout the world have not been able to arrest increasing unemployment rates, it would be presumptuous to claim that this study provides a solution to the problem. Nevertheless, ways need to be found to optimise the impact of skills formation and job creation efforts. The following recommendations are made on the basis of the findings of the present study: • The structural and attitudinal changes taking place in the workplace should be investigated and workplace demands should be matched with the skills needed by workers. • Efficient, modern systems of administration staffed by technically competent officials should be established to manage the implementation of skills formation and job creation strategies. • A close relationship should be established between government, business and labour. • All persons over the age of 15 years who enter the labour market (and those who are already in the labour market) without the prospect of becoming employed should be registered as job seekers. • All young people should have a minimum of 12 years general education and enhanced forms of technical education. • Educational and training institutions should disabuse learners of the idea that they have to be dependent on someone else to give them a job. • The general and further education and training system should provide learners with the basic skills in mathematics, language, science and technology required by industry. • Qualified mathematics and science teachers should receive recognition through higher salaries. • Appropriate assistance should be provided to education leavers and to the unemployed. • The basic skills of those already in jobs should be improved. • Employers should be assisted on how to organise and implement workplace training. • Organisations should double their investment in training to at least 2% of their payrolls. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2002

This study investigated schooled unemployment by focusing on the following aspects: The importance of a positive interaction between the education system and the labour market. The importance of a positive interaction between the education system and employment opportunities. The importance of the involvement of employers in education. With a "school-to-work change, it is clear that the economic "health" of the community is located in the viability of school education. The country is experiencing an acute need for highly trained workers, and this inhibits its long-term economic growth and international competitiveness. It thus seems as if a gap exits between the labour market's changing requirements and the education system's way of preparing the country's youth for a career. Education, according to literature, is too academic, while vocationally directed education does not receive sufficient attention. The value of any education system is seated in the preparation of learners for employment opportunities and better living conditions, and in this connection theory and practice ought to be integrated, which will result in the education system providing in the real needs of the community. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

Evidence seems to suggest that with 14 years of unbroken economic growth, the UK’s construction and building services sector is experiencing severe skills crisis of between 40 – 50 per cent retention rate and declining numbers of entrant trainees. More importantly, the level of this severity varies with sub regional and regional peculiarities. To date, most studies on this area have focused on increasing the population of the existing pools of labour rather than harnessing existing ones. Adopting the concept of multiskilling, current techniques of evaluating skills crisis were critically reviewed. While there has been some empirically beneficial application of this concept in the US, it is a rarity in the literature to find previous works on multiskilling in UK’s construction and building services sector. Adopting an action research approach, a Project Steering Group of industry stakeholders served as a research ‘think tank’ for validating empirical results, and in line with the theory of construct validity, instruments of survey were designed and operationalized in a pilot and major surveys of supply and demand sides’ target groups. Employing the relative index ranking technique, the forecast implications of UK’s economic stability are ‘real’ and a demand led system is prescribed as a tentative ‘cushion’ for sustainable but immediate redress. A time series data for the period 1961 – 2004 is explored and systematised quantitative demand led models for evaluating construction output based on aggregated and disaggregated manpower attributes are developed using principal component regression (PCR). Aggregating these models, it is deduced that multiskilling could help redress skills shortage in the long term. A new trade equilibrium framework and a multiskilled focused partnership in training programme are prescribed with response strategies and recommendations.

This dissertation builds on existing work by members of the ‘Occupational Structure of Britain 1379-1911’ project, led by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and E.A. Wrigley. It addresses three central problems of the project, namely (a) the lack of geographical and temporal coverage by the project’s existing data sources before the nineteenth century, (b) the allocation of the numerous men with the indistinct denominator of ‘labourer’ to occupational sectors, and (c) the correction of occupational structures derived from single-occupation denominators for the (presumed) ubiquity of dual employments in the early-modern world. The solutions to these problems result in a set of estimates for the male occupational structure of England and Wales between 1600 and 1850, in twenty-year time intervals, at the level of sectors (primary, secondary, tertiary) and sub-sectors (farmers, miners, textile workers, transport workers, etcetera), at national, regional, and local geographical scales. These estimates raise important questions regarding the validity of conclusions drawn in the highly influential national accounts literature. Firstly, they place the structural shift from agriculture to industry firmly in the seventeenth and, to a lesser degree, even the sixteenth century, well before the Industrial Revolution. This, in turn, means that productivity growth in the secondary sector during the Industrial Revolution must have been much higher than previously thought, and thereby also the effects of technological and organisational innovation. Secondly, it provides strong evidence that although economic developments during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century may seem to have been limited and gradual at the national scale, this surface calm hides diverging regional developments which were anything but limited and gradual, held together by a persistently growing transport sector. The result was a regionally specialised yet integrated economy, firmly in place at the eve of the Industrial Revolution which – in light of the known role of small, specialised regions as incubators of technological innovation and novel forms of economic organisation in present-day economies – may well have contributed to Britain’s precocious transition to modern economic growth.

Following the Second World War, middle-class married women in English speaking Canada became for the first time a significant proportion of the labour force. Nonetheless, society still encouraged them to take up their domestic roles as housewives and mothers. They were subjected to discriminatory government policy, justified by traditional gender norms supported by academic research and popular social commentators. As a result, their lives became increasingly divorced from the prescriptions that encouraged them to remain at home. The differences meant that their work, and its associated challenges, went unrecognized. Drawing on a broad range of sources, this thesis explores how and why middle class women – especially married ones- entered the workforce, the public’s reactions to their work, and how they negotiated the difference between prescriptions and their lives. It demonstrates that the 1950s were a watershed moment for women’s labour. Married women gained greater recognition of their place in the workforce, and obtained incremental changes to minimize discriminatory policy, practice, and attitudes. Accordingly, their efforts were foundational for the future women’s labour movements and Second Wave Feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s.