%0 Journal Article
%T Does Family Policy Influence Women¡¯s Employment?: Reviewing the Evidence in the Field
%A Emanuele Ferragina
%J Political Studies Review
%@ 1478-9302
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1478929917736438
%X During the past two decades, the debate over the relation between family policy and women¡¯s employment in high-income countries has grown in prominence. Nevertheless, the evidence proposed in different disciplines ¨C sociology, politics, economics and demography ¨C remains scattered and fragmented. This article addresses this gap, discussing whether family policy regimes are converging and how different policies influence women¡¯s employment outcomes in high-income countries. The main findings can be summarized as follows: family policy regimes (¡®Primary Caregiver Strategy¡¯, ¡®Choice Strategy¡¯, ¡®Primary Earner Strategy¡¯, ¡®Earning Carer Strategy¡¯, ¡®Mediterranean Model¡¯) continues to shape women¡¯s employment outcomes despite some process of convergence towards the Earning Carer Strategy; the shortage of childcare and the absence of maternal leave curtail women¡¯s employment; long parental leave seems to put a brake to women¡¯s employment; unconditional child benefits and joint couple¡¯s taxation negatively influence women¡¯s employment but support horizontal redistribution; policies and collective attitudes interact, influencing women¡¯s behaviour in the labour market; and the effect of policies is moderated/magnified by individual socioeconomic characteristics, that is, skills, class, education, income, ethnicity and marital status. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for future research
%K family policy
%K women¡¯s employment
%K childcare
%K leave
%K family allowances
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1478929917736438