The Structure of Women's Employment in Comparative Perspective

In this paper we analyze social survey data from 19 countries using multi-level modeling methods in an effort to synthesize structural and institutional accounts for variation in women's employment. Observed demographic characteristics show much consistency in their relationship to women's employment across countries, yet there is significant variation in the effect of demographic characteristics on women's employment across countries. Disentangling specific policy conditions from overall policy generosity leads us to discover important non-linearities in the effects of parental leave on the employment of women with young children, and that federally supported childcare is positively related to the probability of employment of married women and women with young children.