Abstract (may include machine translation)
Family policies in Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary – when viewed against the background of their different socioeconomic framework conditions – are based on concepts that are primarily geared to the family as a unity and not to the individual person. These concepts assign individual family members to different societal positions, contribute to a conservative restoration of the roles of women and men, and stabilize traditional gender hierarchies. Social spending cuts and the privatisation of services are even more precarious in the transformation countries, which are additionally burdened with the economic and social costs of system change, than in Austria. In none of the three countries, though, the social and family policy prerequisites for reconciling job and family obligations are satisfactorily fulfilled. An insufficient supply of public child care facilities is an important structural obstacle in this regard. A familialisation of women, in association with an idealisation of the mother role and private child care, tends to be one of the consequences. It should be noted that experiences from various countries show that it is not the amount of transfer benefits, but the opportunity for women to earn their own income in combination with a qualified public child care scheme and partnership-based family models that account for higher birth rates. Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria are still far away from any such solutions as formulated in Scandinavian family and social policy concepts.
Translated title of the contribution | Family policy measures in Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 417-427 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 4 |
State | Published - 2003 |