Modernisation, Culture and Part-Time Employment: The Example of Finland and West Germany

Abstract

The paper discusses how differences between European countries in the rate of part-time employment among women can be explained. In contrast to the usual explanations, the paper emphasises the importance of cultural specificities in the respective countries with respect to the gender contract on the main family and integration model to which individuals as well as institutions refer in their orientations and behaviour. The differences are explained socio-historically by the specificities in the process of modernisation when transforming from an agrarian to an industrial society, showing why in each country a different family and integration model developed. Questions as to the form in which industrialisation occurred, which societal class dominated the transformation process culturally, and whether there was a cultural continuity or discontinuity, are important for cross-national differences in the family model and for the labour market behaviour of women today.