Insecurity, Unemployment and Care: Gendered Gaps in Insurance, Childcare, and Leave Policies Across Four Countries

In times of economic crisis, non-standard workers, who more often are women, are among the first to face redundancy. While in need of income protection, they often have fewer entitlements to unemployment insurance or benefits. For mothers, a transition to unemployment may entail additional constraints in terms of care responsibilities when it comes to leave and child-care entitlements. Furthermore, governments may curtail much needed family policies in times of crisis, due to budget cuts. This chapter combines a genderisation/degenderisation lens with a typology of unemployment welfare regimes in order to trace often hidden gendered implications. It assesses the design features of unemployment insurance or benefits, childcare and leave policies in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In all four countries, non-standard workers face challenges in accessing unemployment insurance or benefits, for instance, because of eligibility requirements that also include past employment records, which is often disadvantageous to women. Furthermore, entitlements to paid leave are sometimes related to employment status, particularly when it comes to more extended parental leave, posing additional obstacles to unemployed mothers. Also, the availability and accessibility of childcare is sometimes based on employment status and often scarcely available for full-time working hours. Such findings point to institutionally-embedded gender inequalities and genderising policies with potential negative knock-on effects notably for mothers who combine care-giving for under–school age children with a non-standard job, notably in times of crisis when employment opportunities decline and unemployment increases.