Women's employment transitions around child bearing

Women's increasing participation in the labor force since the 1950s demands that knowledge about their labor supply needs to keep pace with the changing world. One important change has occurred among mothers of small children, they are increasingly working for pay in successive generations, as the break in their employment has become increasingly shorter. Legislation was enacted in the UK to outlaw unequal pay and discrimination in employment on the basis of gender, while statutory maternity leave was introduced in 1976 and extended in 1986. The proportion of mothers taking maternity leave has since increased, as has full-time employment among mothers. The authors examine the transitions into and out of paid work which women make after childbirth, helping to determine whether recent generations of mothers have benefitted from the policy changes, whether all have benefitted equally, and whether any effects persist beyond the period around the first childbirth. Study data are drawn from the fifth sweep of the National Child Development Study (NCDS) 1958 birth cohort at age 33. The experiences of mothers in the 1958 generation suggests that women have begun to benefit from the equal opportunities provisions enacted in Britain during the 1970s. The age of the youngest child is the most important determinant of women's participation over the preschool years, and relatively better educated women have the highest degree of continuity in employment across childbirth.     

Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

The article investigates the nature of the increasing involvement of women in the decision-making structures of the fifth largest UK union through a study of senior women union officials. It is argued that senior union women, operating within a feminist paradigm, balance both transformational and status quo objectives in working towards union survival and renewal.     

Bayesian Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Analysis and Returns to Compulsory Schooling

This paper is concerned with the use of a Bayesian approach to fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) designs for understanding the returns to education. The discussion is motivated by the change in government policy in the UK in April of 1947, when the minimum school leaving age was raised from 14 to 15—a change that had a discontinuous impact on the probability of leaving school at age 14 for cohorts who turned 14 around the time of the policy change. We develop a Bayesian fuzzy RD framework that allows us to take advantage of this discontinuity to calculate the effect of an additional year of education on subsequent log earnings for the (latent) class of subjects that complied with the policy change. We illustrate this approach with a new dataset composed from the UK General Household Surveys. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The dynamics of positive action in UK trade unions: the case of women and black members

This paper considers positive action strategies amongst UK trade unions, aimed at increasing membership and levels of participation and representation among women and black workers. It provides an overview of women’s, black members’ and race structures within large Trades Union Congress unions and a detailed case study of one large UK trade union. We find that there are salient differences in the way that unions approach issues of gender equality, compared with the approach adopted towards race equality. The paper explores possible explanations, justifications and implications of these differences.     

Characteristics of North Sea oil reserve appreciation

In many petroleum basins, and especially in more mature areas, most reserve additions consist of the growth over time of prior discoveries, a phenomenon termed reserve appreciation. This paper concerns crude oil reserve appreciation in both the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. It examines the change in reserves attributed to North Sea fields over time, seeking to reveal patterns of reserve appreciation both for individual fields and for groups of fields classified by potentially relevant common elements. These include field size, year of production start-up, geological age, gravity, depth and depletion rate. The paper emphasizes the statistical analysis of reserve appreciation. It contrasts the Norwegian and UK experience. An important distinction is drawn between appreciation of oil-in-place and changes in recovery factors. North Sea oil reserve appreciation between production start-up and the last observation year (usually 1996) is found to be substantial, but generally lacks a consistent profile. Appreciation recorded for the Norwegian fields on average is considerably greater than for the UK. Most UK appreciation is seemingly accounted for by oil-in-place; in Norway, from increases in recovery factors. However, UK recovery factors commence at much higher levels than those for Norway.     

The effects of equal value claims on businesses

This article examines the law relating to claims by women employees that their work is of value equal to that performed by men. It focuses on several recent case-law authorities, considers difficulties with the legislation, and the possible non-compliance of UK law with EEC standards.     

Education,Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates*

Despite anti‐discrimination policies, women are paid 20% less then men in the UK. A large proportion of this wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, I investigate whether the unexplained component is due to mis‐specification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, I examine the role of choice variables (subject of study and occupation) as well as career expectations and aspirations. The evidence indicates that women are more altruistic and less career‐oriented than men. Career break expectations, for example, explain 10% of the gender wage gap in the favoured model. By omitting attitudinal variables, most studies are likely to overestimate the unexplained component of the gender wage gap. Women with a more traditional view concerning childrearing are also found to have less intensive search behaviour. Since aspirations may reflect perceived discrimination or social pressure, current legislations are unlikely to reduce the gender wage gap.     

The estimation of HIV prevalence for women of child bearing age in New York City

As the AIDS epidemic developed in the United States, emphasis turned from estimates of HIV incidence in male populations to estimates of HIV prevalence in the larger population, and to estimates of prevalence in sentinel populations. The concern was that heterosexual contact with male intravenous drug users was responsible for increased HIV prevalence among young women. Increases in HIV infection in women of child bearing age would result in increases in the number of HIV infected children. Thus, women of child bearing age would become an especially important sentinel population.The Newborn Seroprevalence Project was part of a national population-based survey to assess HIV prevalence among women of child bearing age. Blood from every newborn was obtained and tested for the HIV antibody. The observed proportion of seropositive births obtained during a given year in a given age/race/region stratum was used to estimate HIV prevalence of all women in that stratum.The purpose of this paper is to estimate the stratum and population-specific HIV prevalence and prevalence proportions for New York City women of child bearing age in 1991, as well as to estimate the bias that results from using the sample proportion in these efforts.     

Overcoming barriers to women's workplace leadership: insights from the interaction of formal and informal support mechanisms in trade unions

Women face gendered barriers to union leadership. In-depth interviews with UK and Australian female senior trade union leaders investigated how mentoring strategies can help women overcome barriers to leadership. Formal mentoring is most important, but the interaction of mentoring and informal support networks bolsters gender equality and workplace democracy.     

National differences in entrepreneurial networking

The paper reports findings of a study into the personal contact networks of Greek entrepreneurs, and compares these to results already published for other countries (Canada, Japan, Italy, Northern Ireland, Sweden, the UK, and the USA). Findings show that generic behaviour across borders cannot be assumed, although similarities exist in the under-representation of women as network members, the average age of network contacts, duration of relationships, and average monthly meetings. A clear example has also been provided of a culture where business networks are very deeply embedded in social structures, and where little or no evidence of an instrumentalist neo-classical model can be found. From a theoretical perspective, adaptation of Hofstede's four-dimensional model provides a generally robust interpretive framework for the results.     

What are the implications of the new UK age discrimination legislation for research and practice?

Forthcoming changing demographics and the introduction of the relatively recent UK age discrimination legislation make it timely to consider some of the debates around the relevance of age to work. Issues surrounding ageing have been considered from within a number of disciplines and research perspectives which have led to some questioning of the dominant economic model that pivots on chronological age as a convenient, bureaucratic, measure that proxies for ability. The role of the HR practitioner in being able to redefine expectations throughout the lifespan of employees is considered while constraints to managing for the longer term are acknowledged. It is proposed that although the legislation will affect some age‐related practices positively, there are likely to be unintended consequences that single out particular age groups as special cases and therefore make age more relevant to the work relationship.     

Causal conditions for loneliness: a set-theoretic analysis on an adult sample in the UK

While age has been identified as a risk factor for loneliness, whether it is a necessary or sufficient condition for loneliness has never been examined. This is the first study that applies fuzzy-set QCA, a special type of set-theoretic method, to discover the necessary and sufficient causal conditions for loneliness, respectively, among adults in the UK, analysing the data collected from the UK sample of Round 6 of the European Social Survey (ESS, 2012, n = 2163). It firstly examines the configurations of five conditions: being female, old age, not living with spouse/partner, bad health, and not being frequently social with others. Gender was found neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for loneliness, and old age was close to being a necessary condition and became necessary when united with any of the other conditions; the configuration of not living with spouse/partner and not healthy and not frequently social with others is a sufficient condition. Robustness of results was tested with two different conditions (a limiting illness and a confidante), and a separate analysis on the absence of loneliness was conducted. The effect of the unbalanced distribution of cases across different values of the outcome was highlighted as a source of uncertainty, and the results on the absence of loneliness are different from those on its presence.     

Victimisation and agency: the social construction of union women’s leadership

This article interrogates the notion that women union leaders lead differently. Despite significant variation in the union movements in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, similar discourses on women’s union leadership emerge in all five countries. Based on a materialist social construction approach which supports a recognition of difference without reference to essentialist ideas about women’s nature, this article seeks to identify what may be common across these countries to explain this phenomenon. The article argues that the fact that women face discrimination in unions, on the one hand, and organise as a constituency and have access to women‐only education, on the other, supports the development of transformational leadership among women unionists, even across diverse contexts and cultures. Unpacking union women’s leadership practices in this way reveals a dialectic of victimisation and agency.     

How does changing age distribution impact stock prices? A nonparametric approach

This paper examines whether variations in demographic structure have influenced stock prices. The study employs a nonparametric approach based on the Fourier Flexible Form representation, which relates variations in the entire age distribution to the normalized stock price under a flexible functional form. The main findings of this paper are that there is a significant impact from prime working‐age consumers on the stock price, and that this impact is robust for all G5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA). These findings survive many robust tests, and are consistent with the predictions from the life‐cycle models. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The decision to finance account receivables: the factoring option

Factoring is a financial service enabling enterprises to sell their accounts receivable to a factoring company in exchange for cash. The market for factoring in the UK has been growing at substantial rates and most banking institutions are now actively involved in providing this service. Little research on the factoring market currently exists and so this paper'seeks to profile the determinants influencing decision making in the UK factoring industry. Using data from an interview‐based survey, this paper establishes that the decision to purchase an enterprise's accounts receivable is influenced by the enterprise's size, type of product or service it offers, industry, sector, age, type of customers, financial statement, the management team, operational suitability, collectability and credit notes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

WHITHER UK PENSIONS POLICY?

While the UK may be facing much less serious pension difficulties over the next 50 years than other countries, the issue should not be ignored. Increasing the retirement age would be possible, but funded pensions are also an important option. The UK government has used marketing to encourage funded pensions, but policy changes would also help. Ultimately, the basic state pension could become funded.     

MUTUALITY,PERFORMANCE AND EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION†

ABSTRACTS The determinants of CEO compensation within the UK Building Society sector are investigated. Using an unbalanced panel data set for the period 1986–90, we find only weak support for the existence of a positive link between performance and CEO remuneration. In contrast we find age to be an important determinant of CEO pay increases. This finding reinforces the oft noted potential for inefficiencies in mutuals. Given that alternative market based control systems are absent, our results suggests that there is a lack of any mechanism to align owner and manager interests in the UK building societies.     

The gender dimension of technical change and the role of task inputs

By 2011, the employment shares of UK graduate men and women had become equal for the first time. With no evidence of a significantly declining graduate female–male wage differential, this suggests that the relative demand for graduate women must have increased in order to accommodate the faster increase in their relative supply. However, gender clustering in degree subjects suggests that male and female graduates may not be perfect substitutes in production and therefore that gender biases may exist in the relative demand and supply of graduate labour. Consequently, this paper investigates whether industry level skill demand shifts have differed for men and women, focussing specifically on the role of technical change and job task inputs. The paper shows that, despite the large growth in the percentage of women obtaining a degree, overall women lost out from technical change between 1997 and 2006. This was most likely as a consequence of their lower quality numeracy and literacy skills, as well as other skills required to undertake the tasks that are correlated with technical change, especially in highly computerised private sector industries like finance and machine manufacturing.