Women's Labour Force Participation in Later Life - a Heritage of Family Policies of the Past?

In many European countries, women aged 55-64 participate to a far lower share than men in the labor force. So far there is little theorizing and research about this issue. The paper aims to explore how far cross-national differences in family policies in an earlier historical period contribute to the explanation of the differences. We assume that cross-national differences in the degree to which the previous family policy and the main cultural family model in a country have supported women’s early return into employment after childbirth contribute substantially to explain of why the current labor force participation rates of women age 55-64 differ between countries. The paper introduces the findings of an empirical study on the basis of international Surveys like SHARE, ISSP, Eurobarometer, as well as document analysis, expert interviews and focus group interview of the EU project FLOWS for 11 European countries. The findings support the main assumptions.