360 Soziale Probleme und Sozialdienste; Verbände
Refine
Year of publication
- 2016 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (1)
- Part of a Book (1)
Language
- English (2) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2)
Keywords
- Ageing (1)
- Cross-national (1)
- Gender and educational differences (1)
- ICT products (1)
- Social policy (1)
- Work–family conflict (1)
- housing provision (1)
- social innovations (1)
- user involvement (1)
Institute
The present study concerns the development of a computerized tool targeting housing accessibility issues. A user-centered approach involving professionals from the housing sector and senior citizens from four European countries resulted in a fully functional prototype of a mobile application (app) including an apartment database. The app raises awareness on housing accessibility and has the potential to support decision making and strengthen all citizens regardless of functional capacity to be more active in their endeavors for a satisfying housing solution. Further refinements and additional features are needed to enhance the potential benefits; they include addressing potential challenges facing senior citizens, developing interactive features that allow users to provide input and adapting to different national contexts to make the app applicable for the European market.
In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents’ perceived work–family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for child care and leave from paid work, are capable of reducing work–family conflict as well as the gender and educational gaps in work–family conflict. We use data from the European Social Survey 2010 for 20 countries and 5296 respondents (parents), extended with information on national policies for maternity and parental leave and child care support from the OECD Family Database. Employing multilevel analysis, we find that mothers and the higher educated report most work–family conflict. Policies supporting child care reduce the level of experienced work–family conflict; family leave policy appears to have no alleviating impact on working parents’ work–family conflict. Our findings indicate that family policies appear to be unable to reduce the gender gap in conflict perception and even widen the educational gap in work–family conflict.