Suchergebnisse

Über: Lisa Herzog, Die Rettung der Arbeit. Ein politischer Aufruf , 2019, Berlin. Ausgangspunkt des Buches ist die spätestens seit der Marienthal-Studie (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld und Zeisel, 1975 [1933]) fest etablierte Erkenntnis, dass Erwerbsarbeit nicht nur Einkommensquelle ist, sondern auch ein Element, das den Alltag der meisten Menschen strukturiert und sie sozial integriert. Diese Funktionen gilt es zu schützen, wenn nicht gar zu retten. Für Herzog ist Erwerbsarbeit eine "zutiefst menschliche Angelegenheit", die insbesondere im Zuge einer fortschreitenden Digitalisierung zusätzlicher sozialer, organisatorischer und rechtlicher Gestaltung bedarf, um ihre Integrationsfunktion weiterhin und für viele Menschen beizubehalten. Sie hinterfragt zentrale Vorstellungen, die wir von Arbeit – insbesondere digitalisierter Arbeit – haben, und entwickelt daraus Ansätze und Vorschläge, wie die Spielregeln einer digitalisierten Arbeitswelt lauten könnten. Dazu betrachtet sie fünf Themenfelder: Arbeitsteilung, politische Gestaltung der Arbeitswelt, Verantwortung und Haftung im Wirtschaftsleben, Hierarchien und der soziale Gestaltungswert von Erwerbsarbeit.

Wenn Arbeitnehmer*innen sich vor dem Verlust ihres Arbeitsplatzes ängstigen, hat das schwerwiegende Folgen - für sie selbst und die Unternehmen. Starker Kündigungsschutz lindert die subjektive Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit nicht, Arbeitslosenunterstützung schon. Regelungen zur Existenzsicherung bei Jobverlust müssen transparenter werden.

How can labour market institutions make workers confident about their economic future? While quantitative studies have repeatedly shown that countries' labour market regulations and policies are related to variations in workers' perceived job security, these studies did not explain how these institutions affect workers' perceptions and expectations. This study seeks to close this gap by analysing qualitative interview data collected on employees in Germany and the U.S. during the great financial crisis (2009-2010). The study's main finding is that policies vary in their effectiveness at making workers feel secure about their jobs. While unemployment assistance can reduce workers' worries about job loss, dismissal protection does not seem to effectively increase workers' confidence that their jobs are secure. Overall, employees know relatively little about the policies and regulations that are meant to protect them and have limited trust in their effectiveness. Individual and organisational characteristics seem to be more relevant for employees' feelings of job security than national-level policies. In particular, comparisons with others who have lower levels of protection increase workers' perceived security. These insights are particularly important in light of the ongoing changes in the world of work that are making workers' lives more uncertain and insecure

Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women's wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the US, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labor market discrimination.

"Die Wahrscheinlichkeit einen Job zu finden, in eine Führungsposition aufzusteigen und viel Geld zu verdienen, variiert stark zwischen verschiedenen Gruppen. Nicht alle Ungleichheiten sind auf Diskriminierung zurückzuführen." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)

"Dieser Beitrag geht zwei Fragen nach: Wie ist es zu erklären, dass Weiterbildung trotz ihrer allseits anerkannten Bedeutung in Deutschland bislang nur in relativ geringem Umfang stattfindet? Wie kann erreicht werden, dass Weiterbildung den Stellenwert einnimmt, den ihr Politik, Beschäftigte und Unternehmen einräumen? Aufbauend auf ökonomischen und sozialpsychologischen Theorien sowie Befunden aus der Praxis wird die Diskrepanz zwischen beruflichem bzw. betrieblichem Alltag einerseits und öffentlichen Verlautbarungen und Willenserklärungen andererseits erklärt. Anhand der von Günther Schmid entwickelten Theorie der Übergangsarbeitsmärkte werden Vorschläge zum Ausbau von Weiterbildung mittels der gesetzlichen Arbeitslosenversicherung entwickelt. Eine solche Institutionalisierung von zweiten und auch dritten Bildungschancen über die Arbeitslosenversicherung kann dazu beitragen, Bildungsrisiken abzubauen, Chancengleichheit und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu erhöhen, während entstehende Kosten fair zwischen Individuen, Betrieben und der Solidargemeinschaft verteilt werden." (Autorenreferat)

Objective: This article analyzed gender differences in professional advancement following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic based on data from open-source software developers in 37 countries. Background: Men and women may have been affected differently from the social distancing measures implemented to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that men and women tend to work in different jobs and that they have been unequally involved in childcare duties, school and workplace closings may have impacted men's and women's professional lives unequally. Method: We analyzed original data from the world's largest social coding community, GitHub. We first estimated a Holt-Winters forecast model to compare the predicted and the observed average weekly productivity of a random sample of male and female developers (N=177,480) during the first lockdown period in 2020. To explain the cross-country variation in the gendered effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on software developers' productivity, we estimated two-way fixed effects models with different lockdown measures as predictors – school and workplace closures, in particular. Results: In most countries, both male and female developers were, on average, more productive than predicted, and productivity increased for both genders with increasing lockdown stringency. When examining the effects of the most relevant types of lockdown measures separately, we found that stay-at-home restrictions increased both men's and women's productivity and that workplace closures also increased the number of weekly contributions on average – but for women, only when schools were open. Conclusion: Having found gender differences in the effect of workplace closures contingent on school and daycare closures within a population that is relatively young and unlikely to have children (software developers), we conclude that the Covid-19 pandemic may indeed have contributed to increased gender inequalities in professional advancement.

This study examines how public policies affect parents' preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers' and fathers' work–family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of 'partner months' in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 ( N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers' preferences for longer and mothers' preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.

Wie hat sich die COVID-19 Pandemie auf geschlechtsspezifische Ungleichheiten im Arbeitsleben und dem subjektiven Wohlbefinden Erwerbstätiger ausgewirkt? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage analysiert dieser Beitrag drei Wellen einer nicht zufallsbasierten Onlinestichprobe für den Zeitraum Mitte März bis Anfang August 2020 und umfassen damit den Zeitraum des ersten Lockdowns. Die Ergebnisse unserer multivariaten Analysen zeigen: Frauen, Eltern und insbesondere Mütter waren überdurchschnittlich von Arbeitszeitreduzierungen betroffen. Bei der Wahrscheinlichkeit im Homeoffice zu arbeiten gab es nur geringfügige Unterschiede nach Geschlecht und Familiensituation. Die Zufriedenheit mit der Arbeit, dem Familienleben und dem Leben insgesamt ging bei Frauen, Eltern und insbesondere Müttern überproportional stark zurück. Die beobachteten Unterschiede verringern sich gegen Ende des Lockdowns wieder, jedoch unterschiedlich stark für die einzelnen Ergebnisdimensionen.
Abstract: Gender Inequalities in Employment and Subjective-Wellbeing among the Employed during the COVID-19 Pandemic
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected gender inequalities in employment and the subjective well-being of the employed? To answer this question, we analyze three waves of a non-randomized online-survey from mid-March to the beginning of August 2020. The results of our multivariate analyses show: Women, parents, and especially mothers were disproportionately affected by working-time reductions. The likelihood of working from home differed only marginally by gender and family situation. Declines in satisfaction with work, family life and life in general were stronger among women, parents, and especially mothers. The observed differences decreased towards the end of the lockdown-phase, though to different extends for different outcomes.

Drawing on three waves of survey data from a non-probability sample from Germany, this paper examines two opposing expectations about the pandemic's impacts on gender equality: The optimistic view suggests that gender equality has increased, as essential workers in Germany have been predominantly female and as fathers have had more time for childcare. The pessimistic view posits that lockdowns have also negatively affected women's jobs and that mothers had to shoulder the additional care responsibilities. Overall, our exploratory analyses provide more evidence supporting the latter view. Parents were more likely than non-parents to work fewer hours during the pandemic than before, and mothers were more likely than fathers to work fewer hours once lockdowns were lifted. Moreover, even though parents tended to divide childcare more evenly, at least temporarily, mothers still shouldered more childcare work than fathers. The division of housework remained largely unchanged. It is therefore unsurprising that women, in particular mothers, reported lower satisfaction during the observation period. Essential workers experienced fewer changes in their working lives than respondents in other occupations.