Women’s work–life preferences: reconceptualization and cross-country description over time

Abstract:

According to Hakim’s preference theory, women can be divided into three groups based on their work–family preferences: home-centered, adaptive and work-centered. Here it is argued that Hakim’s conceptualization of the adaptive women is unsatisfactory, as it does not take into consideration how the adaptive women want to combine work and family.

The paper offers a reconceptualization of the adaptive group. Based on when women want to return to employment after childbirth, and how many hours they would like to work, three types of adaptive women are distinguished: the home-oriented adaptive women, the truly adaptive women and the work-oriented adaptive women. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the reconceptualization, a cross-sectional descriptive study of women’s preferences over time is conducted by employing data from International Social Survey Programme.

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