A Cross‐Country Comparison of Gender Differences in Job‐Related Training: The Role of Working Hours and the Household Context
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12299 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12299
56:3 September 2018 0007–1080 pp. 503–555
A Cross-Country Comparison of Gender
Differences in Job-Related Training: The
Role of Working Hours and the
Household Context
Christina Boll and Elisabeth Bublitz
Abstract
Theory suggests that in a partnership, the individual with the lower working
hours and earnings position should exhibit lower training participation rates.
Since women are more likely to match this description, we investigate whether
systematic group dierences in earnings position and working hours explain
gender variation. Across all countries, male workers are unaected by their
earnings position. For female workers in Germany, not Italy or the Netherlands,
working part-time instead of full-time corresponds with a decrease in course
length by 5.5 hours.Regarding German part- (full-)time employedwomen, single
earners train 5.6 (2.9) hours more than secondary earners.
1. Introduction
The role of job-related learning and training activities as a possible driver
of outcome inequalities with respect to pay (B¨
uchel and Pannenberg 2004;
J¨
urges and Schneider 2005; Kuckulenz and Zwick 2003; Munasinghe et al.
2008; Pischke 2001; Sch¨
omann and Becker 1998), promotions (Pannenberg
1997, 1995) and human capital formation (Becker1964; Ben-Porath 1967) has
been highly debated in the literature. From a macroeconomic point of view,
continuing education is decisive in ageing societies in order to secure high
worker productivity over a longer working life. Occupational and technical
changes further reinforce the necessity of lifelong learning. To avoid labour
shortages, it is therefore important to ensure equal access to job-related
training to everyone,avoiding discrimination based on gender.In particular, a
cumulative processsuch that otherwise advantaged individuals self-select into
Christina Boll is at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI). Elisabeth
Bublitz is at the Universit¨
at Hamburg.
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2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
504 British Journal of Industrial Relations
on-the-job training which results in an even higher divergence of income and
career perspectives has to be avoided. Indeed, empirical evidence on training
incidence suggests that dierences among men and women persist although
the evidence remains inconclusive as to who showsa higher participation rate.
Against this background, the question arises whether there exists important
group heterogeneity among men and women, which is crucial in determining
the participation incidence and intensity. Particularly, the household context,
that is, the available household income and the presence of a partner and
children, has been shown to significantlyinfluence labour market participation
of women (Anxo et al. 2007; Bielby and Bielby 1989; Boll 2011; Geyer and
Steiner 2007; Hersch and Stratton 1994; Jaumotte 2003; Lauber et al. 2014;
Vogel 2007) and, hence, might play an important role for the participation
in job-related training. Backes-Gellner et al. (2014) show that there exist
important gender dierences within job categories; that is,there is a part-time
penalty for training incidence of men but not of women.However, so far there
is little empirical research on the relationship betweenjob-related training and
the household context which is why the present article aims to fill this gap.
Previous research suggests that forpersons who take over more tasks in the
household — hence, with a higher likelihood of holding part-time jobs and
lower earnings than a respective partner — there arefewer incentives for their
employers as well as individuals themselves to invest in job-related training. If
part-time jobs can be observed more frequently among women, the job status
may explain gender-specific variation in participation in job-related training.
These relationships and potential explanations are found in human capital
theory (Becker 1964), bargaining models (Manser and Brown 1980), ‘doing
gender’ theories (West and Zimmerman 1987) and discrimination theories
(Becker 1957). Hence, our aim is to understand how the earnings position,
as a measure of the household context, moderates the influence of working
time or gender on job-related training across countries. The earnings position
distinguishes between employees who do not live with a partner in the same
household (singles) and those who do and earn more than their partner (main
earners), the same (equal earners), or less (secondary earners). Due to macro-
level institutions, we expect that in terms of the participation in job-related
training, the influence of the earnings position is further moderated by the
working time culture and availability of childcare facilities.
To investigate training participation, we use information from the EU
Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) for Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
Although Italy and Germany both belong to the ‘corporatist’ welfarestates
according to Esping-Andersen’s (1990) well-known regime typology, the two
countries have been pursuing dierent employment strategies in recent years.
The Netherlands is assigned to dierent categories depending on the chosen
country typology (Arts and Gelissen 2002). The three countries show distinct
characteristics regarding their level of training but also regarding female
labour participation and family-friendly work environments, allowing us to
analyse the influence of the institutional environment and to investigate the
robustness of our main hypotheses.
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2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
Gender Dierences in Job-Related Training 505
We implement a step-wise estimation procedure for two samples: (a) men
and women in full-time positions and (b) women in full- and part-time
positions.1On both samples,we run Probit regressions with training incidence
as dependent variable and use Tobit regressions for training intensity (course
length) as a robustness check. First, we only include the central variables
(sample (a): gender and earnings position; sample (b): working hours and
earnings position) which are then interacted with each other in the second
model. The third model includes three-way interactions with country and the
fourth model covers several additional control variables.
As to the main results of the study, only female workers in Germany are
aected by their earnings position: Working part time instead of full-time
corresponds with a decrease in course length by 5.5 hours. In addition, as
regards German part- (full-)time employed women, single earners train 5.6
(2.9) hours more than secondary earners; hence, both reduced workinghours
and a reduced contribution to the household’s labour income are associated
with less training. Our results hold at the intensive and the extensive margin,
indicating that, in our sample, German women needto overcome household-
related barriers to level gender dierences in job-related training.
Our study adds to the literature in three aspects. First, it sheds light on
the remaining variation in training engagement beyond the set of covariates
that is usually employed in the literature. As an original contribution, we
test the power of the relative earnings position in the household combined
with the working time in explaining in-groupvariance in training involvement
after controlling for established individual and job-related characteristics.
Second, the study explores how country fixed eects interact with the named
two variables, potentially showing the robustness of the new dierentiators.
In addition, we test the country-specific role of children below 12 in the
household for job-related training. Third, the study deals with the extensive
and the intensive margin in the same methodological setting, supplementing
the results from training participation with the findings for episode length.
The outline of the article is as follows. Section 2 providesthe background for
the study from which we derive our hypotheses. Section 3 describes the data,
variables and the methodology applied. Section 4 provides our main findings
for participation incidence, a robustness check using training intensity and a
discussion of the results. Section 5 concludes.
2. Background
Previous Research on Job-Related Training
From a theoretical point of view, a lower training engagement of women
compared to men seems plausible for various reasons. By building on an
economic rationale to explain human capital investments, human capital
theory (Becker 1964) argues that the amount of human capital investments
hinges on the returns to investment. Assuming a fixed-resource budget,
individuals choose their investments such that the pay-o rates of dierent
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2018 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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