Work-family conflict in Europe. A focus on the heterogeneity of self-employment

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims at analysing how subjective work-family conflict is experienced by different self-employed men and women in comparison to employees and informal workers in Europe. Firstly, it focuses on how job-related resources and demands characterise traditional and emerging types of self-employment affecting the perception of work-family conflict. Secondly, it explores both gender-related institutional and societal dimensions, by analysing how the conflict is differently mediated by reconciliation policies and by the degree of gender equality in society. Based on the 6th European Working Condition Survey, findings show that self-employment is a hybrid area of work which, depending on its characteristics, can be more similar to entrepreneurial, dependent or informal work. As for the work-family conflict, the study indicates that self-employment can only mitigate it in the case of ‘dependent self-employment’, a work arrangement which, however, while facilitating the reconciliation of work and family, poses significant problems in terms of quality of the working conditions, especially in the case of women. Genuine forms of self-employment seem instead to represent a source of conflict, and to suffer the lack of gender equality in different European societies and labour markets.