SUPPORTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF MOTHERS - POLICY VARIATION ACROSS 14 WELFARE STATES

This article compares 14 OECD countries, as of the middle-to-late 1980 s, with respect to their provision of policies that support mothers' e mployment: parental leave, child care, and the scheduling of public ed ucation. Newly gathered data on 18 policy indicators are presented. Th e indicators are then standardized, weighted, and summed into indices. By differentiating policies that affect maternal employment from fami ly policies more generally, these indices reveal dramatic cross-nation al differences in policy provisions. The empirical results reveal loos e clusters of countries that correspond only partially to prevailing w elfare-state typologies. For mothers with preschool-aged children, onl y five of the 14 countries provided reasonably complete and continuous benefits that supported their options for combining paid work with fa mily responsibilities. The pattern of cross-national policy variation changed notably when policies affecting mothers with older children we re examined. The indices provide an improved measure of public support for maternal employment. They are also useful for contrasting family benefits that are provided through direct cash transfers with those th at take the form of support for mothers' employment. Finally, these po licy findings contribute to the body of scholarship that seeks to inte grate gender issues more explicitly into research on welfare-state reg imes.