Comic revisions? Motherhood and women’s comedy in contemporary Germany

Maternal stereotypes and the realities of mothering are prominent themes in Anke Engelke’s Ladykracher and Martina Hill’s Knallerfrauen, two of the most popular sketch shows in twenty-first-century Germany. This article relates their success to social anxieties about motherhood, which Engelke and Hill illuminate through the theme of their sketches as well as through their very use of comedy to do so. I begin by using close-readings of Ladykracher and Knallerfrauen to illuminate the political potential of the sketch form to challenge maternal myths and articulate taboo feelings such as maternal ambivalence. I then consider the innovation of these maternal sketches in view of traditional theories of comedy, which paradoxically draw their imagery from the realm of the maternal even though they discount real women and mothers as comic agents. I argue that the maternal sketches of Engelke and Hill are thus doubly subversive, challenging maternal taboos as well as the discursive and generic norms they sustain.     

Gender gaps in STEM in Japanese academia: The impact of research productivity,outside offers,and home life on pay

To understand differences in labor market outcomes between genders, economists must examine a complex array of potentially significant factors, such as institutional context, productivity differences, child-bearing and home production, and bargaining behavior. Many of these factors are not well captured by standard data sources. We use a new survey of academics in Japan to better understand the sources of gender pay differences. We find a 6% pay gap which persists when we control for research productivity, despite an institutional context shaped by explicit salary tables. We do not find a motherhood wage penalty, and the gender salary we document is not affected by differences in outside job offers.     

Weaving cohesive identities: New Zealand women talk as mothers and workers

Abstract

This exploratory study examines the discourses which construct women as mothers and workers and explores the strategies the women use to weave these sometimes contradictory identities together. Discourse analysis was used to explore the talk of two focus groups of first‐time mothers, all New Zealanders of European descent in stable heterosexual partnerships with babies aged less than six months. The women deployed an intensive mother discourse which privileged their maternal role and positioned the babies as needing parental care and mothers as the natural providers of that care. However, they also felt the pressure of successful woman and economic rationalist discourses in which paid work is essential to wellbeing and good citizenship while motherhood is devalued. The women's decisions about re‐entering the paid workforce were characterised by conflict and constraint. The analysis focuses on the strategies of resistance that the women used to warrant their life choices, including constructing motherhood as a job, and deploying an independent mother discourse which serves to facilitate their striving for the best of both worlds. Also explored are some of the structural barriers that serve to further limit women's choices.     

‘Being able to bear a child’: Insights from Zimbabwean women in Melbourne

Problem

In non-Western societies, childlessness carries numerous social consequences and has a significant impact on the gender identity and well-being of the women.

The role of parenthood in shaping the gender wage gap – A comparative analysis of 26 European countries

We use cross-national data on 26 EU countries to estimate how parenthood contributes to the gender wage gap, and assess how institutional elements affect this relationship. We find that irrespective of cultural norms and policies, fathers receive a wage premium, which increases the gender gap. Motherhood gaps vary across countries. The highest gaps are seen in Eastern European countries, where policies and norms lead to long absences from work. Moderate to small penalties are found in Continental Europe, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries, alongside higher maternal employment. No motherhood penalties are found for Southern EU countries, where mothers return to work quickly or exit the labor market indefinitely.     

Early education and care quality: Does it matter for maternal working hours?

This study investigates whether mothers whose children enter early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers of higher quality are more likely to work longer hours. The empirical analysis links the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study with the K²iD-SOEP extension study, which collected ECEC quality information from childcare centers across Germany. Based on a sample of 556 mothers of 628 children with a mean age of 2.6 years at center entry, the authors applied change score models with entropy balancing to account for differences in a rich set of observable characteristics. The findings show that higher levels of quality with respect to child-teacher-ratio and partly also activities promoting child learning and offered services for parents are associated with greater increases in working hours for mothers since the year before using the ECEC center. No significant relationships emerged for group size and equipment.     

Social support and the working hours of employed mothers in Europe: The relevance of the state, the workplace, and the family

This paper studies the influence of state, workplace, and family support on the working hours of employed mothers and how these different support sources interact. Data taken from the European Social Survey 2004/2005 as well as country-specific information were used to estimate several hierarchical models. We find evidence that the availability of supportive workplace arrangements and family support positively impact the working hours of employed mothers and that state policies facilitating the traditional family have a negative effect. There is weak support for a positive relationship between state policies facilitating the dual-earner family and working hours of employed mothers. In addition, most of the sources of support appear to be complementary. Supportive family role models and supportive workplace arrangements have a reinforcing relationship, as do publicly funded child care and supportive workplace arrangements.     

Motherhood and Graduate Education: 1970–2000

This study examines issues related to the fertility of graduate students over time. First, it examines changes in motherhood rates between 1970 and 2000 among women aged 20–49 who are enrolled in graduate school, both by themselves and relative to prevailing trends among women not enrolled in graduate school, and to other college educated women. Overall, women enrolled in graduate school are increasingly likely to be mothers of young children, and are increasingly similar to non-graduate students. Second, it examines the timing of these births, and finds that almost half of births occur while women are enrolled in graduate school. Third, a brief review of current maternity leave policies and childcare options available to graduate students is presented. Results are discussed in terms of institutional changes within academia, changes between cohorts that attended graduate school in these decades, and the policy needs of graduate student mothers.

Are motherhood penalties and fatherhood bonuses warranted? Comparing pro-work behaviors and conditions of mothers, fathers, and non-parents

Research has confirmed a motherhood penalty and fatherhood bonus at work. Employers, it appears, regard mothers and fathers differently from one another and differently from non-parents. We have yet to systematically explore whether mothers exhibit fewer pro-work behaviors than fathers and non-parents or whether fathers engage in more of them than mothers and non-parents. This article draws on nationally representative data from full-time employed adults to investigate mother, father, and non-parent differences in work effort, work intensity, job engagement, and four measures of work enhancement from home. Mothers and fathers are similar on five out of seven outcomes tapping pro-work dimensions. When they differ, mothers report greater job engagement and work intensity than fathers. Mothers are no different from non-parents on all outcomes. All findings hold net of individual, job, and family controls. I conclude that reducing workplace gender inequality will require organizational changes that pay explicit attention to workers’ care-giving responsibilities.     

NANNY/MAMMY: COMPARING LADY GREGORY AND JESSIE FAUSET

The article constructs a framework for future inquiry about the role of the servant class in the works of Lady Augusta Gregory and Jessie Redmon Fauset. Irish writer Lady Gregory, like her African American counterpart, regarded the working classes with marked ambivalence. The elite of their respective societies, both artists patronized those of lesser social stature to varying degrees. At the same time, however, they both faced powerful adversaries and colleagues alike who sought to keep these female writers themselves ‘in their place.’ As a result of their complex identities, the servant figures perform deeply provocative roles in their writing. The nanny/mammy, with all of the attendant problems of race, class, and gender, embodies the sometimes similar and sometimes divergent battles waged by these two pioneering artists. Questioning notions of ownership and the labor of literary production, the essay also uses the nanny figure as a metaphor to probe Fauset's and Lady Gregory's remarkable trials of dispossession.