Reconciliation of work and family life in Switzerland.
| Verfasser | Thoenen, Olivia |
1 Introduction
In October 2004, the results from the Babies and Bosses Studies (OECD 2004; Thoenen 2010) were presented in Switzerland. At the press conference, the Federal Councillors Joseph Deiss and Pascal Couchepin stressed the importance of policies to improve the compatibility of family and employment and admitted that the existing policies are not yet at an acceptable level in Switzerland. Deiss (2004) explains why there are obstacles to introduce a reconciliation policy that actually deserves this name. He stresses two reasons: Firstly, the wide range of such a policy combined with the federal system causes a fragmentation of authority. And secondly, the tight financial situation of the state budget constitutes a second obstacle for further reforms.
Are these really the most important reasons why Switzerland shows so low state support, compared to other western countries, in policies to reconcile family and employment? This chapter will have a look at the reasons why Switzerland has comparably low benefits to help parents improve the compatibility of family and working life.
This chapter investigates the factors regarded by international research as important in explaining the variations in reconciliation policies. These factors will afterwards be discussed in the case of Switzerland-always with a special focus on the role of the Swiss political system and its institutions. The chapter is structured as follows: After the presentation of the current stand in reconciliation policies and the elaboration of the theoretical argument (2), a description of the Swiss reconciliation policies will follow (3). After comparing the Swiss public policies to other western countries, it will be discussed why Switzerland has lower public reconciliation policies (4).
2 State of the Art regarding Swiss Reconciliation Policy and Theoretical Considerations
Research on family policy is strongly marked by the research on the welfare state. The family policy typologies existing today have their roots in Esping-Andersen's (1990) seminal work on welfare states. In the following years, feminist scholars criticized his work for being gender blind. Several feminist typologies arose including the family and gender dimension inside their methodological framework (Daly and Rake 2003; O'Connor et al. 1999; Sainsbury 1999; Lewis and Ostner 1994; Orloff 1993; O'Connor 1993; Lewis 1992). In more recent years, research has focused on single policy fields that are important to help parents to reconcile family life and paid employment. An overview of this research can be found in Kulawik (2005). Morgan (2006) identifies three main areas that are important to help working parents. These are: care policies, parental leave policies and workplace policies. Scientific work of the last ten years has tried to identify care regimes (e. g. Szelewa and Polakowski 2008; Anttonen and Sipila 1996; Bergqvist 1999; Bettio and Plantenga 2004) or leave regimes by comparing different countries and their public policy regimes. Here, the work of Moss and Deven (2005; 2002; 1999) should be stressed. They started the comparative research on leave policies in Europe and founded the International Network on Leave Policy and Research. This network still reports on the latest news on leave policies in 20 different, mostly European countries. Research on the third subject, family-friendly work place policies is rather underdeveloped compared to the other two research fields. One reason is the role the state is playing in this sector. In leave policies and also in care policies, the state has a longer and more undisputed position in taking over responsibility. In the workspace this is not the same; here the responsibility is more often left to the market: to the unions and to the employers. As the research question to be answered in this chapter is why Switzerland has less public provisions to help parents to combine paid employment and family life, it just focuses on policies that are clearly in the realm of public policies. Hence, it focuses on care and parental leave policies. Further important areas of family policy are monetary benefits like child allowances, childcare allowances and tax deductions. Although this is a very important support for families in their daily life and also an important cornerstone of family policy, it is not discussed in this chapter since monetary benefits are not a measure to help parents combine family and paid work obligations in a direct manner. Research on the determinants of women's participation in the labour market has also shown that monetary benefits do not have a significant influence (Kenworthy 2008; Stadelmann-Steffen 2007; van der Lippe and van Dijk 2002).
Studies on the determinants of policies to reconcile family life and paid work have shown that three factors are important to explain the differences between welfare states. These are (1) the position of women in society, in particular the proportion of women in politics, (2) the path dependency of the policies, and (3) the institutions of the country (Thoenen 2010; Bonoli and Reber 2010). These studies also show that the predominant party family in the countries plays a weaker role than older studies looking at financial support (e.g. child allowances) suggested.
Political institutions have an effect on social policies, as different research has shown (Huber and Stephens 2000, 2001). A country's institutional system may affect its policy arrangement through the number of its veto points (Tsebelis 1995: 289; 320). The effect of the policy arrangement has different reasons: Firstly, federal structures have more veto points and therefore it is more difficult to change a political system. Furthermore, in a fragmented fiscal system, where the highest federal level only has marginal fiscal income, the possibilities for generous public policies are restrained (Vatter and Freitag 2002: 69).
The argument regarding the effect of the influence of women in politics is thus: Research has shown that strong women's organizations cooperating with strong social democratic parties can successfully bring women's interests into politics (Sainsbury 1999; Hobson and Lindholm 1997; O'Connor et al. 1999). Women in politics can represent a women's point of view and affect the direction of policies (Borchorst 1994; Norris and Lovenduski 1989). This effect is strongest on policies like child-care, health or education (Lovenduski and Norris 2003). This effect is still relevant although women are not a homogenous interest group with one political vision. However, concerning interests that affect the independence of women, women should have more homogenous ideas and interests that are different from those of men (Borchorst 1994). All in all, research can show that countries with a higher proportion of women in the political bodies have higher public expenditures for women-friendly policies (Huber and Stephens 2001; Ferrarini 2006; Bonoli and Reber 2010).
In the following, these two points--political institutions and women in politics--will be looked at in the case of Switzerland. The aim is to see if the low public support for families who try to combine family life and paid work in Switzerland can be explained with the help of these two factors. Institutions are operationalized with the decentralization degree of the country. Here the classification by Pippa Norris (Norris 2008) is used to classify the western democracies into unitary and federal states. To measure the influence of women in politics the proportion of women in the national parliaments is used (Stadelmann-Steffen 2007; Huber et al. 2004; Ferrarini 2006). The data are taken from the Comparative Political Data Set I (Armingeon et al. 2009).
3 Reconciliation Policies--Switzerland in International Comparison
The following section gives an overview on the Swiss policies to improve the compatibility of family and working life. Two main areas are looked at: parental leave policies and care policies. The different levels of the Swiss federal states are always taken into consideration. As explained in the introduction, family benefits will not be considered in this chapter because this is not a primary measure that helps parents to combine family and work life. To contrast the public policies with the situation in the Swiss employment market, data of women's employment situation in Switzerland is given in the beginning.
Switzerland is an interesting case with regard to female employment rates and the level of public support to improve the compatibility of family life and paid work. Although public support is low, Swiss women are--according to the basic female employment rate--strongly integrated in the labour market. Does this mean that, in spite of the weak policies, Swiss women are as well integrated in the employment market as women in other countries? In the following section this will be discussed briefly.
As in other western democracies, the proportion of women in paid employment started increasing in the 1980s (Bauer and Strub 2002). However, this increase is primarily an increase in part-time rather than full-time employment rates. It would be wrong to speak of an increase of full time employment since the total number of working hours of Swiss women remained more or less constant. Despite the high employment rate of Swiss women, Switzerland can still be labelled a male-breadwinner country (Stadelmann-Steffen 2007: 28-30). Looking only at the overall female employment rate, Switzerland has one of the highest numbers compared to other countries and is clearly above the European mean. However, a simultaneous look at the part-time employment rates of Swiss women shows that also here Switzerland has one of the highest numbers, again above the European mean. Monika B[mu]tler (2007) shows in her article that the Swiss reconciliation policies are one reason for this finding: In her research on Swiss women in the city of...
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