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Saturday, August 4, 2012: 9:15 AM
Faculty of Economics, TBA
Oral Presentation
In 2009 2.3 million persons in need of care lived in Germany in terms of the care insurance act. Due to demographic change the number of care dependent persons is projected to increase to approximately 3 million until the year 2020. Home based family care is preferred compared to residential care: two-thirds (1.6 million) of care dependent persons are cared for at home. And it is mostly women who reduce or give up their employment in order to take care of family members.
As a demographically induced skills shortage is expected for the future the adult worker model gains in relevance. This means that every person should participate in the labour market. Against this background women who are not employed because of caring for family members are to be activated and supported in order to return back into the labour market or to increase their working hours. But previous research showed: the re-entry into the labour market after a family-related absence is a difficult process which does not always succeed.
The presentation would assess the individual consequences of being not employed because of caring for family members and the process of re-entering into the labour market. Our questions are: How can women reconcile work and care responsibilities? Why do women rather than men have to deal with this challenge? Are there differences between the re-entry after caring for children and caring for elderly family members? To answer these questions, we describe the German care system and the current legal regulations as well as the main results of a group discussion with experts. Most of all, we analyze narrative interviews with women who have not been employed for three years or longer because of a care induced interruption and who are trying to re-enter the labour market.
As a demographically induced skills shortage is expected for the future the adult worker model gains in relevance. This means that every person should participate in the labour market. Against this background women who are not employed because of caring for family members are to be activated and supported in order to return back into the labour market or to increase their working hours. But previous research showed: the re-entry into the labour market after a family-related absence is a difficult process which does not always succeed.
The presentation would assess the individual consequences of being not employed because of caring for family members and the process of re-entering into the labour market. Our questions are: How can women reconcile work and care responsibilities? Why do women rather than men have to deal with this challenge? Are there differences between the re-entry after caring for children and caring for elderly family members? To answer these questions, we describe the German care system and the current legal regulations as well as the main results of a group discussion with experts. Most of all, we analyze narrative interviews with women who have not been employed for three years or longer because of a care induced interruption and who are trying to re-enter the labour market.