Organizational work–life policies and the gender wage gap in European workplaces

Summary

The paper "Organizational work–life policies and the gender wage gap in European workplaces" by Van der Lippe and Van Breeschoten investigates how the availability of organizational work-life policies influences gender wage inequality within European workplaces. The authors hypothesized that such policies could reduce the gender wage gap by enabling men and women to better combine work with family responsibilities. For their methodology, the researchers utilized data from the European Sustainable Workforce Survey. Their dataset included information from 259 organizations and their employees across nine European countries. To test their expectations, they employed multilevel analyses, a statistical approach suitable for examining relationships within hierarchical data structures, such as employees nested within organizations. The study's findings indicate that organizations providing work-life policies generally exhibit a smaller gender wage gap. A significant aspect of their results was that both the specific type and the total number of policies offered had an effect. Contrary to their initial expectations, flexibility policies, such as flexible working arrangements, were found to be more crucial in reducing the gender wage gap than dependent care policies, like parental leave and childcare support. Additionally, some sources suggest that these policies were particularly effective in narrowing the gender wage gap at the lower end of the pay distribution. The authors also demonstrated that controlling for organizational culture regarding family supportiveness did not alter these core results, suggesting the direct impact of the policies themselves. The implication of these findings is that organizational work-life policies can serve as a mechanism to reduce gender inequality in wages, highlighting the importance of strategically implementing policies that genuinely support employees' abilities to balance work and family life. Specifically, policies granting employees greater autonomy over their work schedules might be more effective in addressing pay disparities than those primarily focused on caregiving provisions.