Childbearing, Women's Employment and Work‐Life Balance Policies in Contemporary Europe, edited by Livia Sz. Oláh and Ewa Fratczak. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2013, 240 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 32088 8, $105.00, hardback. Work and Care under Pressure: Care Arrangements across Europe, edited by Blanche Le Bihan, Claude Martin and Trudie Knijn. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2014, 200 pp., ISBN: 978 9 089 64542 5, $37.50, hardback. Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of US Work‐Family Policy, by Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum. ILR Press, Ithaca, NY, 2013, 168 pp., ISBN: 978 0 8014 5238 3, $69.95, hardback.
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | Marian Baird |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12081 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
BOOK REVIEWS
Childbearing, Women’s Employment and Work-Life Balance Policies in Contemporary
Europe, edited by Livia Sz. Oláh and Ewa Fratczak. Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke, 2013, 240 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 32088 8, $105.00, hardback.
Work and Care under Pressure: Care Arrangements across Europe, edited by Blanche
Le Bihan, Claude Martin and Trudie Knijn. Amsterdam University Press,
Amsterdam, 2014, 200 pp., ISBN: 978 9 089 64542 5, $37.50, hardback.
Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of US Work-
Family Policy, by Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum. ILR Press, Ithaca, NY,
2013, 168 pp., ISBN: 978 0 8014 5238 3, $69.95, hardback.
Here are three books dealing with the topic du jour — work and care. Of concern to
all three are policies of the state and their impact on personal decisions. These books
do not claim to be about industrial relations or workplace relations specifically, but
they are dealing with matters that have become critical to understanding and evalu-
ating the relationship between work and care, and its impact on female and male
labour force participation.
In each of the books, the rationale for focusing on work and care policies is
explained through the changing demographics of the workforce, increasing female
participation rates and ageing populations. Clearly, there are labour market implica-
tions as well as social effects of these changes. That so much attention in these books
is paid to state policy is also interesting. The lack of questioning about trade union
roles or more detailed analyses of labour market regulation in the first two edited
collections is surprising to an industrial relations reviewer, but to be fair, they do not
claim to be about the employment relationship per se, but about the individual work
and care decisions of women (primarily) and men, and the institutional and policy
contexts in which they make these decisions.
The first book is an edited collection by Oláh and Fratczak, both demographers,
who focus on the issue of fertility rates and women’s childbearing intentions. Five
European country case studies are provided: two ‘high fertility’ societies (Sweden, by
Fahlen and Loah; and France, by Pailhe and Solaz) and three ‘low fertility’ societies
(Germany, by Lutz, Boehnke, Huinink and Tophoven; Poland, by Fratczak and
Ptak-Chmielewska; and Hungary, by Takacs). (The marker for high and low fertility
rates is the replacement rate, which is 2.05 children per woman.)
Two concepts guide the editors, and for the most part the contributing authors, and
they provide a useful link between the chapters. These concepts are ‘uncertainty and
risk’, relating to employment and economic security; and ‘incoherence’, relating to the
disjuncture between attitudes to gender equity in education and at work, and gender
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12081
52:3 September 2014 0007–1080 pp. 603–621
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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