Gender, work and family (1)

In Republic of Korea, patriarchal family system has brought about imbalanced sex ratio at birth and it kept prevailed even in the mid-1990. However, sex ratio at birth steadily declined since the mid-1990 unlikely other Asian countries. Since imbalanced sex ratio at birth is caused by son preference, this study will examine the factors that might have influenced to the decline of son preference, with particular emphasis on the status of women in society and in household.
Data collected from the Korea National Fertility and Family Health Surveys of 1994, 2003 and 2009 was used. The survey involved women who were aged 15-49 and ever-married. Dependent variable is women’s opinion on “must have a son”. Independent variables are the socioeconomic status of women such as education and occupation level, women’s position in the household when it comes to decision-making and autonomy in the household.
Logistic regression analysis indicates that the influence of married women’s status in the society and household on son preference is varied in different years. In past, women who have lower status in society tend to have higher son preference. However, as the society kept developing, women’s son preference is much more affected by women’s status in household than societal factors.

The present paper aims to assess gender disparity in educational expenditure in the rural and urban sectors of India using Consumer Expenditure data collected in various rounds by National Sample Survey Organization. Also the paper examines whether the change in age and sex composition contributes to change in educational expenditure from the first to the second survey period. Linear form of Engel function, bivariate and multivariate analysis is used to fulfil the first objective and to obtain the second objective Decomposition Analysis is employed. Findings indicate that there is an overall increase in educational expenditure over time, however gender disparity exists in expenditure on primary, secondary and higher education. In rural sectors gender inequality in expenditure has increased over time. In urban sectors the inequality has decreased, but the gape is high compared to rural sectors. Result from Decomposition Analysis reveals that compositional shift in female population is the main factor which contributes to decrease in educational expenditure among females over time. The study suggests that looking to the scenario, Government should implement programmes to reduce existing gender inequality in educational expenditure by enhancing investment in education, and special emphasize should be given on females.

This paper focuses on the association between ‘family and work’ and presents research-based evidence to address varying strategies of female migrants to deal with the paradoxical combination of family and work. In particular, this analysis aims to examine appropriate theoretical models regarding the association between family characteristics and female immigrants’ work outside the home in multicultural and multiethnic context. It highlights native-migrant differentials, and the differentials between migrants by ethnic origins with regard to the association between ‘family and work’. The multivariate results of this analysis support the key fact that the substantial effects of family on women’s work outside the home tend to persist beyond the influence of migration status and ethnic diversity. Further, the results confirm that the strategies of female migrants to deal with the paradoxical combination of family and work vary substantially in terms of their ethnic backgrounds.

Using a demographic approach, this paper presents research-based evidence to explain the dimensions and differentials associated with the representation of family, gender, and work in varying socio-cultural contexts. This paper is based on gender socialization theory in which educational system, particularly school education resources, is recognized as the first official agent of and the most powerful engine of socialization process. The fields of study are two countries which are substantially varying in terms of demographic characteristics and socio-cultural backgrounds: Iran and New Zealand. This cross-cultural analysis provides the opportunity to explain whether and to what extent the representations of family, work and gender through the educational system are associated with varying socio-demographic backgrounds. Using the method of content analysis, this paper highlights the main patterns and differentials associated with the representation of family, gender and work characteristics through school education resources of these two varying socio-demographic settings.

Autonomy is the ability to obtain information and make decisions about one's own concerns. It facilitates access to material resources such as food, land, income and other forms of wealth, and social resources including knowledge, power, prestige within the family and community. The article tries to address the role and importance of men education in women autonomy in India. The data from National Family Health survey round-3 was analyzed for India. The results from the bi-variate analysis shows that the women autonomy increases if husband is studied higher education. The findings shows that pattern of impact of husband education is almost same in all the (five) decision making. Around 15% of the women have not been involved in any decision making and only 33% of the women involved in the entire decision making. However the results are quite opposite if we control husband education with age of respondent, age of husband, women education, place of residence, type of family structure, religion, caste, wealth index and sex of household head. Husband education is not an important factor for women autonomy and there some other factors play an important role in women autonomy then the husband education.

Being entrepreneur is one of the phases in men and women life time. In my paper I try to describe the basic demographic characteristics of entrepreneurs (self-employed). Who is the winner and who fails and how it influences his lifetime. Data come from retrospective survey of micro enterprises in one region of Poland. Some of entrepreneurs give up their businesses naturally without any reason or financial difficulties. This article discusses the application of models for relative survival rates in the evaluation of entrepreneurs’ failure forecast models in Poland. The relative survival rate is a ratio of the overall survival rate and the expected rate for individuals belonging to a homogeneous reference population. Entrepreneurs’ life from the moment of diagnosis (loss) to their „death” (liquidation) or the moment of censoring was observed. The remaining subjects from the analysed sample served as a reference population. Applying the models for relative survival rate served as a tool to assess the entrepreneurs’ failure risk analysis. According to descriptive analysis there are more men than women starting their entrepreneurs careers and they are more successful. Highly educated entrepreneurs and those for whom it was the only source of money have higher chances of survival. All analysis will be compared to EU countries.

Housework allocation from a gender perspective has been the focus of extensive research over the past decades, as the gender division of household labour is a crucial component of the continued existence of gender stratification. Couples often experience conflicts in relation to household work. In Sweden this has been explained by the fact that gender equality, both at home and at work, is strongly normative, but not always matched by an equally egalitarian situation in the family. Perceived fairness of housework sharing can therefore differ from the ‘objective’ share of total housework hours. If the sharing of housework is perceived as unfair, the level of conflict about home tasks is also likely to increase. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between housework sharing (egalitarian/non-egalitarian), perceived fairness of the division and frequency of conflicts about home tasks. Our research approach is explanatory and we will develop a typology using latent class analysis. The analysis will be based on data from the 2009 round of the YAPS survey of 1054 Swedish young people living with a partner.

The precarious financial situation of many elderly women in developed countries is a well-established fact. Nonetheless, in depth insight in the causes remains largely absent. Social policy researchers have analyzed the effects of pension regulations on poverty among the elderly. However, they have failed to consider the importance of sequence, timing and interaction of family and career events. On the other hand, the interaction between these events is a central research theme for demographers and family sociologists alike. Nonetheless, in this strand of the literature, the elderly have remained largely overlooked. Moreover, the interaction of these events with pension regulations is barely considered, even though pensions are the main income source for the elderly. In response to this dearth of knowledge, we argue it is essential to investigate how family trajectories, career trajectories and pension regulations interact. It is only by investigating these interactions that poverty among elderly women can adequately be accounted for. We use unique administrative data of more than 100.000 people older than 60 living in Belgium and their family members. The elderly’s poverty risk is linked to over 45 years of career variables and socio-demographic variables.

Previous research has shown considerable marriage premiums in earnings for men, but often penalties for women of being in a union. In this study we extend this research by analyzing how the age difference between spouses affects the earnings profiles of men and women. As we follow people over time in advance as well as within their marriage we are able to separate pre- from post-marital earnings movements. The data consists of information on annual earnings 1990-2009 for all Swedes born 1960-1974. The results seem to indicate that age-homogamy is best for earnings, for both men and women. Quite interestingly, age-heterogamy has similar effects of earnings regardless of which spouse is being oldest. However, most of these results are explained by assortative mating, in which men and women with greater earnings potentials find partners of a similar age. Overall, the age-difference between spouses seems to have a very limited causal effect on individual earnings.

Abstract: The women in Uttarakhand played an important role in addressing the development issues be it a reformation of state or protecting environment .The steps taken by them has got a national recognition. The women in Uttarakhand has crossed the reservation from 33% to 40 %.Despite the positive facts and figure the women has faced problems addressing the social issues in the region. The majority of the women representatives from various sector are without training, orientation and technical knowledge. They are manipulated by bureaucrats, politicians and dominant power brokers in the villages. Most of the Women Representatives faced the problems of non cooperation from the officials. These problems have slowed the pace of developmental works and also elected representatives to fully participate in the development sector. Needless to say that the women were not meant to be representatives as the rest of the members, instead they were meant to be co-opted.