Abstract
An influential body of work has identified a ‘welfare-state paradox’: work–family policies that bring women into the workforce also undermine women’s access to the top jobs. Missing from this literature is a consideration of how welfare-state interventions impact on women’s representation at the board-level specifically, rather than managerial and lucrative positions more generally. This article contributes to addressing this ‘gap’. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 22 industrialised countries reveals how welfare-state interventions combine with gender boardroom quotas and targets in (not) bringing a ‘critical mass’ of women onto private-sector corporate boards. Overall, the analysis finds limited evidence in support of a welfare-state paradox; in fact, countries are unlikely to achieve a critical mass of women on boards in the absence of adequate childcare services. The results further suggest that ‘hard’, mandatory gender boardroom quotas are not necessary for achieving more women on boards; ‘soft’, voluntary recommendations can also work under certain family policy constellations.
Highlights
The expansion of ‘defamilialising’ policies designed to reduce the family’s care load and conflicts between employment and care has helped bring more women across advanced economies into the workforce
The analysis reveals that only countries with some form of legislation governing the gender composition of corporate boards have achieved a critical mass of women on boards
Finland and Sweden – which have relatively large public-sector workforces and widespread childcare services – are the only countries with soft regulations to have achieved gender-diverse boards, which suggests that the institutional context matters for the success of soft measures (Mensi-Klarbach and Seierstad, 2020 make a similar point)
Summary
The expansion of ‘defamilialising’ policies designed to reduce the family’s care load and conflicts between employment and care has helped bring more women across advanced economies into the workforce These trends have especially benefitted lowerincome women who cannot afford market solutions to work–family conflicts and who typically find better working and pay conditions in the public sector (e.g. EspingAndersen, 2009). The United States and other less generous welfare states have been leaders on this measure, with the Conservative, Mediterranean and Post-Socialist regimes sitting in between these two poles (Mandel and Semyonov, 2006) Missing from this literature, is a consideration of the relationship between different work–family constellations and women’s representation in the very top leadership positions at the board level. The institutional context affects the potential achievements of the soft approach, as it has been most successful under ‘women-friendly’ work–family policy constellations
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