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Gender, Work and Family Issues

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Employment Inequality

According to a Labour Force Survey compiled by Statistics Austria, approximately half of Austrian citizens are employed. Most notable is the rate of young adults and adults of childbearing age. At 85%, the employment rate among 25–49 year olds is the highest. Youth and young adults who are between the age of 15 and 24 have low employment rates, which may be attributed to pursuits in education. Typically young adults still earning their education take advantage of what is known as Geringfügige Beschäftigung (Marginal Employment), which is paWoman at job conference (by pokpok313 from Creative Commons)rt time work covered by accidental insurance and constitutes about 10% of all part time work. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, mothers who return from leave take advantage of this option because this enhances their career opportunities. On average, women account for more than 85% of all part time workers, with the average of 39.1 hours. Austrian women who hold part-time jobs are less likely to advance in the workplace and will have a reduced income because of it.

           
Austria seeks to promote dual earner families by providing them with special tax incentives and benefits. Due to the decline in marriage in Austria and the increase in cohabitation and single parent families, the Austrian family structure is known as a “modified breadwinner society” and such incentives as parental leave and FLAF, a family fund where general tax monies are given to families support have contributed to the rise of the employment rate of females in Austria over that past decade. But there is still a substantial gap in employment between men and women once they reach childbearing age. Women typically postpone their careers in order to become the caregivers and men do not take full advantage of the parental leave benefit. Younger women in Austria often reduce their hours to less than full time in order to balance work and home life or they take shorter maternity leaves in order to stay ahead of the game. These brief separations from the workfWorking Austrian woman (by7Bart from Creative Commons)orce tend to create gender wage gap and occupational sex segregation among males and females. Austrians continue to believe that children and family life suffer from women’s employment outside the home because even though women are working more, they must still devote their time to properly raising their children.

References:
Austria: Data, Figures, Facts. 2008. Vienna, Austria: Statistics Austria.
 
Leitner, Andrea and Angela Wroblewski. 2006. "Welfare States and Work-Life Balance: Can Good Practices Be Transferred from the Nordic Countries to Conservative Welfare States?" European Societies 8(2):295-317.
 
National Experts of the European Observatory on the Social Situation, Demography and Family. 2004. “Families in EU-15 Policies, challenges and opportunities.”
 
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2003. Babies and bosses: reconciling work and family life: v. 2, Austria, Ireland and Japan. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques
Tulane University