Abstract
Gender has long been recognized as an important social division, with women occupying a disadvantaged position relative to men in a wide range of areas. Britain, France and Germany are broadly similar in their formal legislation around sex equality, but the extent to which they are able to ameliorate the position of women depends very much on the substance of these formal provisions, and in this they differ quite markedly. In respect of promoting employment, for example, French policy is firmly focused on providing affordable childcare designed to meet the needs of working mothers. By contrast, in Germany childcare provision is comparatively poor, and initiatives in the form of leave arrangements are oriented towards enabling mothers of young children to take time out of the labour market to care for children at home, and/or to combine part-time work with childrearing. Britain, meanwhile, is the laggard of the three in respect of recognising the barrier that motherhood poses to women’s employment; it combines poor childcare provision with weak rights to take time off to care or to re-organize working patterns to better reconcile work and family responsibilities.
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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Kilkey, M. (2004). Women. In: Compston, H. (eds) Handbook of Public Policy in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522756_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522756_30
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