Suchergebnisse

Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Rahmenbedingungen und Orientierungsgrößen die
Berufsorientierungen von Frauen strukturieren und welche Rolle formelles und informelles Lernen bei der Gestaltung der Erwerbsverläufe spielt. Hierfür wurden im Rahmen von zwei international vergleichend angelegten Studien 24 Frauen interviewt, die in der Mitte ihres Erwerbslebens stehen. Studien belegen, dass für die Berufsorientierung von Frauen das Zusammenwirken von Rollenerwartungen, familiären Verpflichtungen, die Karriere des Partners und die Antizipation geringer Bildungsrenditen wichtige Einflussgrößen sind. Dies spiegelt sich in einer Orientierung an sozialen Berufsfeldern sowie diskontinuierlichen Erwerbsverläufen, Teilzeitbeschäftigung und der
Zuverdienerposition von Frauen wider. Darüber hinaus dominieren bei Frauen mit einem mittleren
Qualifikationsniveau eine horizontale Erwerbsmobilität und Berufswechsel gegenüber klassischen
Aufstiegsmustern. Diese erfordern auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt in der Regel eine weitere
qualifizierende Berufsausbildung im Lebensverlauf. Auch die qualitative Untersuchung zeigt, dass bei
den interviewten Frauen Lernen und weitere berufliche Qualifizierungen nicht dem beruflichen
Aufstieg, sondern in erster Linie dem Wiedereinstieg in den Arbeitsmarkt nach einer familial
bedingten Erwerbsunterbrechung, der horizontalen Arbeitsmarktmobilität sowie der Beschäftigungssicherung
dienen. Die Annahme, dass Weiterbildung und Höherqualifizierung die Arbeitsmarkt- und
Aufstiegschancen von auf dem Arbeitsmarkt benachteiligten Gruppen verbessert, konnte für Frauen
im Rahmen der Studien nicht belegt werden.

Reconstructing the parallel structure of 'dual' and 'school-based' vocational routes reveals the close connection between the German vocational training system and the segmentation of the labour market by gender. The example of jobs in childcare and pre-primary education shows that the legacy of semi-professionalism in these occupations is not just rooted in the nature of training and working conditions, but complexly interlinks with the prevalence of the male breadwinner model sustained by social policy regulations and the German taxation system. In France, by contrast, the central state takes responsibility for the provision of childcare from zero to six years of age to support female labour force participation and dual-earner couples. This has also fostered professionalisation in the respective occupations. Whilst this may not necessarily induce a degendering process at the level of horizontal segregation of vocational qualifications, it facilitates gender equality in terms of vertical mobility and the professional status of women.

Women play an increasingly important role in the labour market and as wage earners.
Moreover, in many countries, young women have outperformed men in terms of educational
attainment and qualification. Still, women's human capital investment does not pay off as it does for
men as they are still significantly disadvantaged on the labour market. Based on a qualitative empirical
investigation with women in their mid-career, this article investigates the role of learning for women's
labour market participation and career paths. Women's careers complexly intersect with role
expectations, family needs, the career of the partner and anticipation of low returns of educational
investment. This is typically reflected in discontinuous employment, part-time work and women's
secondary wage earner position in the family. Furthermore, women qualified at the intermediate skills
level are more likely to move horizontally in their career than vertically. Horizontal mobility thereby
requires significant engagement with learning as the German labour market usually requires a formal
qualification to realise a career change. Learning and further training thus become instrumental to
facilitate and support women's career transitions, which are often aimed at re-entering regular
employment after longer periods of family-related interruptions and/or to remain qualified in jobs in
the social, health and educational fields, all of which are female dominated. Ultimately, women's
significant engagement with continuing learning is not primarily expected to support career
advancement and vertical mobility, particularly as it can neither alter discontinuities of employment
nor the German-specific nexus between welfare, family and education policies and the labour market.
This challenges the lifelong learning rhetoric insofar as one key aim of lifelong learning policies is to
support labour market inclusion and the mobility of disadvantaged groups.

In Germany, the dual system of apprenticeship training has traditionally been very strong. The dominant position of the dual system, however, is being challenged by other training routes gaining significance, particularly tertiary education. This article investigates the extent to which this is leading to a restructuring of the dual system. Developments in school-based vocational programmes, trends of academisation and challenges deriving from qualifying low achievers are discussed. The growing significance of school-based programmes is linked to the gender impact of the vocational education and training (VET) system and the gender segmentation of the German labour market, while academisation reflects labour market demands for high skills. With dual study programmes and three and a half-year dual training, the dual system seeks to provide attractive training options for highly skilled young people. This, however, has made access to fully-qualifying vocational programmes very difficult for low-achieving young people, including migrants and refugees, thereby challenging the integration function of the German VET system.

Digitalization is engendering profound societal transformation that is significantly restructuring our working lives. For society, and the world of work in particular, digitalization presents a major challenge, as the digital transformation of work does not simply relate to technological innovation; rather, it involves a complex sociotechnical process that is socially prepared, technically enabled, and discursively negotiated, and that ultimately must be individually mastered. As a result, the ongoing digitalization of "working worlds" is characterized by multiple dimensions and processes that evolve and proceed unevenly. These processes interact in complex ways, not uncommonly contradicting each other. Against this background, this thematic issue explores some of the implications and dynamics of the digital transformation of work concerning social inclusion.

Based on a qualitative analysis of 12 solo self-employed women's work biographies, this article investigates the (re)structuring effects of solo self-employment on the professional and private lives of women in Germany in their mid- and late-career stages. While solo self-employment has been gaining significance in the German labour market in the last two decades, it is largely an underresearched subject from the perspective of female labour market participation. Our study shows that the transition to working solo self-employed constitutes a marked break in female work biographies with lasting restructuring effects on their life courses. Constituting a deviation from the female standard life course, this move can be understood as a coping strategy of biographical discontinuities, which translates into specific patterns against the background that women (still) assume most of the care and housework responsibilities. How the transition to solo self-employment is being prepared and managed and what role learning and risk management play in the transition process is the focus of our article. Our aim is to better understand the underlining rationalisation logics of female solo self-employment in terms of labour market participation, reconciling work and family life, and professional self-realisation. While in the German welfare system solo self-employed bear higher risks of precarity and financial old age insecurity, solo self-employment is functional as an individual strategy for action, giving women the opportunity to do justice to their (mid) life courses and intrinsic needs to pursue both professional work and freedom of choice when and how to work. This may act as a corrective for gender inequalities in the world of work, especially when it comes to working in a self-determined way.

In Germany and Denmark, the systems of further education and career guidance are well developed, offering a wide range of services and learning opportunities for targeted, specific and also general skills development. Based on an empirical study with mid-career individuals in both countries, the article investigates how the different systems support individuals to manage a career transition and develop their individual pathways. Mid-career transitions can be considered particularly challenging as they often reflect a more profound crisis and major concerns about future career opportunities. Constraints that prevent individuals in mid-career to fully benefit from the learning and guidance offers available can be identified in both countries. These range from the availability of programmes and accessing funding to getting the 'right' information. These constraints partly derive from adult education and guidance systems presupposing linear careers rather than disruptive trajectories and horizontal mobility.

Compared to general education, vocational education and training (VET) has been shown to facilitate young people's integration into the labour market. At the same time, research suggests that VET falls short in teaching basic skills and, in turn, may lead to less adaptability to labour market changes and long-term disadvantages in individual labour market outcomes. To better understand the relationships between education, skills, and labour market outcomes, we examine to what extent job quality differs between individuals with general education and those with VET with respect to different skill levels. Furthermore, we investigate whether the relationship between type of qualification and job quality differs by skills. We broaden past research by considering four indicators of job quality: earnings, job security, job autonomy, and the match between respondents' abilities and job demands. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies for Germany, we demonstrate that individuals with academic education and advanced VET score higher in job quality concerning earnings and job autonomy as compared to individuals with initial VET. Comparing the two higher qualified groups, academic education is more associated with higher earnings than advanced VET, while the level of job autonomy is similar. Regarding the abilities-demands match, both groups score lower than individuals with initial VET. Moreover, higher literacy skills are associated with higher levels of job quality irrespective of the type and level of formal qualification. Finally, we find no empirical evidence that skills compensate for or reinforce disadvantages in job quality derived from professional qualifications.