The objective of this phase of the project was to analyse 11 local welfare systems, including factors such as the local welfare mix, the local governance and partnership structure, and the quality of welfare services, which may promote or inhibit women’s labour force participation. Three service sectors - childcare, care for older people and lifelong learning - were in particular analysed. Special attention was paid to voluntary organisations. An analysis of the role of the Red Cross in our 11 cities has been made.
Two types of welfare provision have been singled out as of major importance for female employment: care (both for children and older people) and human capital investments (vocational training and lifelong learning). The coverage and quality of services, the welfare mix (public, private and in between), partnerships, and governance structures most favourable for the employment of women and social cohesion were identified based on a comparison of eleven cities in eleven European countries.
The analysis of childcare systems in 11 European cities shows the importance to study not only national childcare systems but also local variation within the national frameworks. Many cities have created their own childcare policies, which are often more generous than the national policy, and the use of formal services is at a higher level locally than at the national level. The most evident examples of progressive local policy-making identified in this project are the two Southern European cities, Bologna in Italy and Terrassa in Spain. This research shows also that it is necessary to take different age groups of children into account when childcare systems are analysed. There are major differences in the formal service provisions and in the use of them
between different age groups of children in all cities, except in Aalborg (Denmark) where affordable, good quality public services are available and widely used also for the youngest age group. There is a major gap in most cities in public or publicly subsidized affordable services especially for children aged 1-2 years. The main problem in the care services for older children is limited time replacement, as the opening hours of the services do not meet the needs of mothers/parents working full-time. There are also gaps in services in atypical hours.
With regard to elder care, it was found that (1) local welfare systems with a high level of generosity towards public or publicly paid formal care for senior citizens are usually also generous in relation to support for family care; (2) the degree of generosity of local welfare systems differs according to the type of welfare regime of the national welfare state to which the city belongs, according to Esping-Andersen’s classical welfare state typology (1990, 2001); (3) in the majority of cities, the extent of the actual care-provision widely corresponds with the degree of generosity of care policies. However, the findings also show that it is not possible to treat the care structures and care provisions as a direct outcome of care policies; i.e. policies do not automatically trigger practices.This is because older people in need of care, their families, and those employed in care work all act within the broader framework of complex and often contradictory cultural, institutional, social and economic contexts of their specific local ‘care arrangements’. The same challenge resulted in different solutions with different effects for formal female employment in different local contexts.
Comparison of the employment oriented lifelong learning systems in the 11 European cities shows the complexity of these systems. Educational policies are mainly formulated at the national level and local authorities alone have very little possibilities to formulate educational policies and provision for the local needs even if some of the cities have taken an active role in networking with different actors for better coordination of this field. Instead, there are other important actors in this field at the national, regional and local levels e.g. regional authorities, labour unions, employers and their organisations, educational institutions and/or employment authorities.
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