Fighting Gender Inequalities in the Labour Market: The Role of Family Friendly Policies in OECD Countries

Olivier Thevenon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

This paper provides a comparison of family-friendly policies in OECD countries and their connection with gender inequalities in the labour market. In most countries, recent evolutions of family-related policies have been driven prominently by the issue of work and family reconciliation. However, the combination of this issue with the other goals of those policies still remains very diverse. To account for this variety, we proceed to a Multiple Factorial Analysis of data on family policies, using the very recent Family database provided by the OECD, and including their different dimensions (development of childcare services; transfers and financial support to families; flexibility arrangements at the workplace) and measure their relation with indicators of child outcome, poverty and gender labour market differences. Then we discuss the results of our cluster analysis with regard to standard typologies of welfare states regimes, which are only partially corroborated.