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Reconciling work and family: a complex challenge for State feminism. Although policies impacting interrelationships between family life and professional life are a key factor in women’s rights, they have long been defined in France on the basis of objectives divorced from such rights, in particular according to concerns that are family-driven, pro-birth, economic or promote the separation between Church and State. Observing the vital role of such policies in defining women’s social citizenship does, however, lead to an examination of directions taken by governmental bodies whose specific mission is to uphold women’s rights and interests and which are generally known as «State feminism ». Established from the mid-1960s onwards, these governmental structures have asserted a role in defining the policy to reconcile work and family on the basis of an outlook focused on women’s rights. However, their manner of addressing the issue has not been uniform.

Increasing mothers’ labor supply is a key policy challenge in many OECD countries. Germany recently introduced a generous parental benefit that allows for strong consumption smoothing after childbirth and, by taking into account opportunity costs of childbearing, incentivizes working women to become mothers and return to the labor force rapidly. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design, we estimate policy impacts for up to 5 years after childbirth and find significant and striking patterns. First, medium-run effects on mothers’ employment probability are positive, significant and large, for some subgroups ranging up to 10 per cent. The effects are driven by gains in part-time but not full-time employment. We also find significant increases in working hours. Second, the probability of job continuity rises significantly, i.e. mothers return to their pre-childbirth employer at higher rates. Third, employers reward this return to work by raising job quality significantly and substantially. We argue that the policy generated a profound change in social norms: the new parental benefit defines an “anchor”, i.e. a societally preferred point in time at which mothers return to work after childbirth.

Academic women in Austria and Germany have extraordinarily high final levels of childlessness of 45-60%, as documented by prior research. This study investigates how female scientists’ fertility behaviour relates to their childbearing ideals and intentions in Austria.

This report has been written as part of the GARCIA project and serves to enable GARCIA researchers to pinpoint the role of context in structuring the career opportunities for women (and men) in the early stages of academic occupations, in order to elaborate self-tailored action plans for equality, that take national, regional and cultural specificities into account.