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This report notes that the Netherlands performs well on many measures of gender equality, but the country faces a persistent equality challenge between women and men: the high share of women in part-time jobs. Nearly 60 per cent of women in the Dutch labour market work part-time, roughly three times the OECD average for women, and over three times the rate for Dutch men. The Netherlands' gender gap in hours worked contributes to the gender gap in earnings, the gender gap in pensions, women's slower progression into management roles, and the unequal division of unpaid work at home. These gaps typically widen with parenthood, as mothers often reduce hours in the labour market to take on more unpaid care work at home. This report proposes that the Dutch government will need to redouble its efforts to achieve gender equality. Better social policy support can help level the playing field between men and women, contribute to more egalitarian norms around the division of work, and foster more gender-equal behaviour in paid and unpaid work in the Netherlands.

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This paper is part of a two-paper series exploring the competences youngsters need to acquire in order to promote environmental sustainability today and in the future. The paper first presents a conceptual framework defining environmental sustainability competence and identifying emotional, cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions. The paper then maps young people's environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries using data from various editions of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Analyses reveal differences in the different dimensions of environmental sustainability competence between boys and girls and between students with a different socio-economic background. The paper then identifies the extent to which young people's engagement in pro-environmental activities align with the engagement of their parents' generation, as well as within-household similarities in pro-environmental behaviours. The paper concludes by examining the role of school-related factors in promoting students' environmental sustainability competence

Published abstract.

The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people's environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students' environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: 'The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: from leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet' [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 150.407]. Show less

Starting with Bourdieu's habitus and capital theory, this paper focuses on the question of whether the cultural resources of families and students have an impact on the status attainment process between the ages of 15 and 45. The analysis is based on the [Lebensverlaufe ins fortgeschrittene Erwachsenenalter (Pathways from late Childhood to Adulthood)] LifE survey, which follows up a youth study conducted by Fend et al. Between 1979 and 1983. It can be shown by means of a structural equation model that there is a substantial transmission of cultural capital between parents and their children and that students' cultural resources have an effect on their educational attainment (reproduction effect). Besides this social inheritance, the amount of cultural capital acquired by age 35 also depends on educational attainment. The effect of cultural capital over the life course is limited to the period up to the completion of vocational/professional education.

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This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. We present evidence that early disadvantages produce severe later disadvantages that are hard to remedy. We also show that cognitive ability is not the only determinant of education, labor market outcomes and pathological behavior like crime. Abilities differ in their malleability over the life-cycle, with noncognitive skills being more malleable at later ages. This has important implications for the design of policy. The gaps in skills and abilities open up early, and schooling merely widens them. Additional university tuition subsidies or improvements in school quality are not warranted by Scottish evidence. Company-sponsored job training yields a higher return for the most able and so this form of investment will exacerbate the gaps it is intended to close. For the same reason, public job training is not likely to help adult workers whose skills are rendered obsolete by skill-biased technological change. Targeted early interventions, however, have proven to be very effective in compensating for the effect of neglect.

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While it is often believed that temporary forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, casual work and temporary agency work, provide workers with more flexibility to balance work and private commitments, convincing empirical evidence on this issue is still scarce. This paper investigates the link between temporary employment and work-life balance in Australia, using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey for the period 2001 to 2017. In contrast to previous studies, we compare results from pooled cross-sectional and fixed-effects regressions to investigate the role of time-constant unobserved worker characteristics in linking temporary employment and work-life outcomes. The results show that, after accounting for job characteristics and person-specific fixed-effects, among women only casual employment is unequivocally associated with better work-life outcomes than permanent employment. For men, we mostly find negative associations between all forms of temporary employment and work-life outcomes, but the magnitudes of these associations are much smaller and mostly insignificant in fixed-effects models. This result suggests that male temporary employees have stable unobserved traits that are connected to poorer work-life balance.

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In this article, the psychological contract existing between line managers and employees is examined in the context of the transition to motherhood and reduced hours or part-time working. The article argues that professional work norms, including working long hours and being ever-available, operate to legitimise the reduction in career development opportunities that accompanies the transition from full to part-time work in professionalised occupations. On one level, therefore, these norms generate mutuality between managers and employees. When combined with demands of motherhood, however, they fundamentally influence how each party interprets their obligations to each other, generating incongruity and, potentially, a breach of the psychological contract. These arguments are illustrated with the use of case study data collected from part-time police officers and their managers in three UK police forces. The theoretical and practical implications of this analysis are developed and discussed.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of Sage Publications. Show less

Even after the establishment of the Italian dual system, the opinion and level of knowledge of the population about the Italian VET system (in particular, the parents of the lower secondary school students) do not seem to correspond to the increase in awareness by the Italian Government and Regions. The study is conducted by mixing qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In the first exploratory part of the research, the opinions of students' parents and teachers were collected through an online survey (91 participants), while the second part (still in progress) involves the administration of semi-structured interviews to teachers belonging to the student guidance networks.

The results analysed so far show that most survey respondents do not know the characteristics of the VET programs and the possibilities available for the students. In particular, 75 per cent of the sample is unaware of the existence of a fourth year, or approximately 60 per cent are unaware of the existence of the dual system and of the possibility of undertaking an apprenticeship. Considering that 40 per cent of the surveyed people deal with guidance in schools, it is possible to assert that the situation is worrying. Several proposals for action have been identified for the promotion of the VET system in Italy. The study confirms the dichotomous form of the visibility of the Italian VET system. On the one hand, the strengths and potentials of the training offer and learning contexts are valued; on the other hand, a widespread misunderstanding of the VET system, including by key people in guidance systems, emerges. As already mentioned, in the next stages of the research project, we intend to identify specifically what are the possible actions to unhinge this situation.

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This literature review provides the context for the NCSEHE Fellowship entitled 'Mind the Gap!': exploring the post-graduation outcomes and employment mobility of individuals who are first in their family to complete a university degree [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 136.519]. This one-year study will explore how learners intersected by a range of equity categories enter the employment market and how individuals experience this entry qualitatively. Adopting a mixed-method approach, the study will draw on statistics related to post-graduation outcomes for the general student population, comparing these to those cohorts from key equity groups. This literature review considers both the available scholarly literature and existing statistics to situate this study both within Australia and internationally. The review has been divided into five sections. It commences with a background to the fellowship project. Section 2 provides an analysis of the available statistics on graduate employment in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Section 3 explores the research and scholarly writing on contemporary and global issues noted in the graduate landscape. The focus then narrows in Section 4 to specifically apply an 'equity' lens to an understanding of this field, drawing upon sociological literature and foci. The review concludes with an overview of the key areas of interest that have been identified and recommendations for future research and scholarly attention.

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This longitudinal research study reports on the experiences of young people with special education needs (SEN) three years after they have completed statutory schooling. The study aimed to provide an overview of the experiences, achievements and attitudes of young people with SEN during their post-16 transitions and beyond and to identify strengths, weaknesses and barriers to further and higher education, training, employment and independent living. This is the third wave of longitudinal research with young people with SEN to record and track their progress as they move from compulsory schooling to early adulthood. The first wave of research with young people with SEN, and their parents and carers, was undertaken in 2000-01 when they were in curriculum year 11. The second wave of research went back to these people in the 2002-03 academic year. This third wave caught up with the young people again in 2003-04 when they were aged 19 or 20, and has sought to update the earlier studies and to map their activities and achievements over time.

The report on wave two is indexed at TD/TNC 80.295. Show less

This paper investigates how and when differences in work behaviour between men and women develop, focusing on the evolution of the gender gaps over the period of family development. The findings support the theory that gender differences in the formal labour market stem from the presence of children in the home and that childbirth and children entering school are critical times in women's employment. Births mark a dramatic decline in participation in work for women, while school entry is a time of considerable turnover in participation. The length of absence from work following a subsequent birth is closely related to whether the mother was in work between births, while maternity pay and leave entitlements appear to influence the precise timing of the return to work. In addition, a return to work following birth is often only temporary. The gradual decline in women's relative wages following the first birth appears to stem from the accumulation of several shorter periods of unusually low wage growth for women around the times of birth and school entry. There is also a sharp movement into part-time work for women following childbirth and a transition towards non-permanent positions and non-supervisory roles at both critical points.

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