In search of family-friendly careers? Professional strategies,work conditions and gender differences in work–family conflict

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether women in a dual-earner context acquire family-friendly jobs as a strategy to keep work–family conflict down. The analysis is based on a survey of newly graduated highly educated men and women in five occupations in Sweden (n?≈?2400). The sample was stratified by occupation and gender to minimize the influence of factors other than gender. The results show that women are more family-oriented, but also more career-oriented than men in their professional strategies. In their jobs, women have less control over work and schedules than men but a similar level of work demands. However, women face lower requirements for employer flexibility (e.g. frequent over time) and this is related to their professional strategies. Finally, women report a higher level of work–family conflict than men in the same occupation, but this gender difference becomes non-significant when accounting for women’s lower level of control. In sum, women in this sample clearly aim for both family and career and do not acquire family-friendly jobs, but aim to avoid ‘family-unfriendly’ requirements for constant availability. To some extent, this enables them to limit their work–family conflict but due to their lower control over work, women still experience more conflict than men in the same occupation.     

When Father Steps Forward and Mother Steps Back: The Moderating Role of Simultaneity in Parents' Coparenting Behaviors in the Development of Anxiety in 4‐ to 30‐Month‐Olds

Infant negative affectivity predicts child anxiety. Coparenting might influence the development of anxiety by weakening this association in the case of supportive coparenting, or by strengthening this association in the case of undermining coparenting. Parents can display coparenting behaviors simultaneously (both parents being supportive or undermining), or divergently (only one parent being supportive or undermining). In our longitudinal study, we investigated whether coparenting moderated the relation between infant negative affectivity at 4 months and child anxiety symptoms 2 years later. Hundred‐sixteen couples dressed up their firstborn infants in a clothes‐changing task. We coded cooperative, mutual, neutral, and competitive coparenting behaviors. Both parents rated infant negative affectivity and child anxiety symptoms. Infant negative affectivity significantly predicted child anxiety. This association was moderated by parents' divergent cooperative coparenting: It was stronger when mothers were cooperative while fathers were neutral, and weaker when fathers were cooperative while mothers were neutral. When fathers step forward (i.e., being cooperative) and mothers step back (i.e., leaving space), they may protect their at‐risk child from developing anxiety.     

From classes to copulas: wages,capital, and top incomes

Public debates about the rise in top income shares often focus on the growing dispersion in earnings, and the soaring pay for top executives and financial-sector employees. But can the change in the marginal distribution of earnings on its own explain the rise in top income shares? Are top executives replacing capital owners in the group of top-income earners, or are we rather witnessing a fusion of top capital and top earnings? This paper proposes an extension of the copula framework and uses it for exploring the changing composition of top incomes. It illustrates that changes in top income shares can easily be decomposed into respective changes in the marginal distributions of labour and capital income and the changing association between the two types of income. An application using tax record data from Norway shows that the association between top labour and capital incomes grew stronger between 1995 and 2005 in the top half of the wage and capital income distribution, though it declined for the top 1% of capital income receivers. A gender decomposition demonstrates that the association of wage and capital incomes at the top is particularly striking for men, whilst women are largely under-represented in the top halves of the two marginal distributions.     

OLIGARCHIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY: A TALE OF TWO ELITES

This paper studies how comparative advantage and the political elites' endowments shape long‐run performance in economies with imperfect political institutions. The trade regime interacts with industrial policy and regulations on capital mobility in governing capital accumulation. In a capital‐scarce economy, capitalist oligarchs striving for import substitution industrialization (ISI) initially shelter the economy from trade, while promoting industrial policies that promote total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector. This gradually shifts the comparative advantage toward manufacturing and renders the economy attractive to foreign investors. Allowing for trade and foreign capital inflows are thus complementary policies that spur growth in the capital oligarchy. By contrast, landed oligarchs in a capital‐scarce economy favor openness to trade at an early stage of development, neglect industrial policies, and block foreign capital to maximize extractable rents. The policy mix causes the economy to stagnate. Consistent with the experiences of South Korea and Argentina in the postwar era, the model predicts that the success of ISI policies depends crucially on the conditions governing the incentives for capital accumulation. (JEL F10, F20, P40, P50, O10, O24)     

Waged Slavery – Incentivizing Unfree Labour at Cape Coast Castle in the Eighteenth Century

This article studies the payment of wages to castle slaves at Cape Coast Castle (in current-day Ghana) in the eighteenth century. A quantitative estimate shows that the wages paid to these slaves were considerably higher than subsistence costs. A large sample of wage payments is also used in order to analyse statistically the existing wage differentials among the slaves. The results indicate that a complex wage structure had been developed in order to incentivize the slaves to work and to foster loyalty towards the slaveholder.     

Making Sense of After‐School Care Dilemmas in Mothers' Stories of After‐School Care in Finland and Sweden

The study focuses on dilemmas in storied experiences of everyday after‐school care arrangements among Swedish and Finnish mothers. Finland and Sweden, which share a history of strong labour market attachment among women, arrange institutional after‐school care in similar ways. The data consist of interviews with three Swedish and six Finnish mothers. A positioning analysis of four stories shows how decisions related to children's after‐school hours were allocated among different actors. Two reoccurring dilemmas, Competent‐dependent child stories and Unburdened‐deficient mother stories, emerged from the data analysis as related to prevailing moral discourses on childhood and motherhood.     

Distress or disability? Could a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies be a way forward when trying to understand experiences of oppression on the grounds of mental distress?

This article explores whether it is possible to use a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies to understand experiences of social oppression on the grounds of mental distress. Thomas’ extended social relational theoretisation of disablism was used in a PhD project concerned with experiences of mental distress. The tentative conclusion was that Thomas’ conceptualisation of disablism and impairment could offer a way of improving understanding of mental distress and oppression on the grounds of mental distress. However, Thomas and Reeve’s theorisation of the different forms of disablism was not readily transferred to the field of mental distress. Thus, tentative definitions of the different forms of disablism in relation to the field of mental distress were created. Perceived impairment type and disablism appear to be interconnected, and one has to acknowledge what kind of perceived impairment type one is focusing on when theorising disability and the different types of disablism.     

Different Pathways from Transformational Leadership to Job Satisfaction

Transformational leaders are known to inspire and motivate their followers, thereby leading to enhanced job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is an intellectual concept regarding individuals’ attitudes toward their jobs. This study asserts that the underlying mechanisms for transformational leadership to affect employee satisfaction are trust in the community, including the leader (that is, organization) and trust in the self, namely self‐efficacy. Leadership is specifically associated with continual transformations in the higher educational context, and collectivist cultures may manifest different processes underlying the transformational leadership–satisfaction relationship. This study investigated the mediating effects of trust and self‐efficacy on the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction. The study sample included academicians from a nonprofit higher education institution in Turkey. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction is fully mediated by both trust and self‐efficacy. The mediator effect of trust was shown to be stronger than self‐efficacy, which is assumed to be the result of the cultural context. The results are discussed in the context of employee satisfaction and cultural determinants of employee satisfaction.     

Is multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) more effective than treatment as usual in a three-year follow-up? Results from MTFC in a Swedish setting

This study examines three-year post-baseline outcomes for a randomized controlled trial of Swedish antisocial youths who received either multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) or treatment as usual (TAU). Several studies in our literature review indicated that MTFC intervention is preferred to the alternative (TAU) in the USA during follow-up. Two studies (one conducted in the UK and one in Sweden) have shown indications of a washout effect between the intervention alternatives during follow-up. However, this study showed few but positive significant outcomes at follow-up for the MTFC programme in comparison to TAU. Juveniles who participated in MTFC spent fewer days in locked settings and had committed fewer violent crimes, according to the social case records. Two key features of the MTFC programme certainly merit use in general social service—namely, reducing exposure to deviant peers and increasing school participation.     

We Did Not Realize about the Gender Issues. So,We Thought It Was a Good Idea

This article explores the link between nationalism, as expressed by the Burman state and ethnic and student opposition movements, and the emergence of a multiethnic women's movement engaged in resistance activities. In focusing on women's involvement in oppositional nation-making projects, this article aims to broaden our understanding of gender and conflict by highlighting women's agency in war. Drawing on interviews carried out with founding members of the women's movement, non-state armed groups and others active in civil society, the article investigates how a gendered political consciousness arose out of dissatisfaction with women's secondary position in armed opposition groups, leading to women forming a movement, not in opposition to conflict per se but in opposition to the rejection of their militarism, in the process redefining notions of political involvement and agency. By invoking solidarity based on a gendered positioning, rather than on an ethnic identity, the women's movement resisted the dominant nation-making projects, and created a nationalism inclusive of multiethnic differences. Burmese women's multiple wartime roles thus serve to upset supposed dichotomies between militancy and peace and victim and combatant, in the process redefining the relationship between gender, nationalism and militancy.