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Women's Perceptions of Consequences of Career Interruptions due to Childcare in Central and Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2010

MARIE VALENTOVA  and
NEVENA ZHELYAZKOVA
MARIE VALENTOVA
Affiliation:
CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg email: marie.valentova@ceps.lu
NEVENA ZHELYAZKOVA
Affiliation:
Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, The Netherlands
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Abstract

The present paper aims to examine the effect of the transition from a state socialist regime to democracy and a liberal economy on women's perceptions of the consequences of employment breaks due to childcare on their further careers in seven post-socialist Eastern and Central European countries. The paper uses data from the 2004 European Social Survey to explore whether women who interrupted their careers to look after young children were more likely to suffer negative consequences for their careers after the transition from socialism to a market-based economy than before the lifting of the Iron Curtain. The paper does this by comparing the consequences perceived by women whose children were born before 1987 with those of women with at least one child born later. It begins by grouping together women from across the region, and then looks at the differences by country of the consequences as perceived by these women. It concludes that women across the region were more likely to experience negative consequences after the transition than before. However, the effect of transition is not found to differ across countries using the ESS data.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 89 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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