Social Investment in Childcare: Exploring Women’s Subjective Assessments of Work-Care Balance Difficulties

Government-subsidised formal childcare is considered one of the key social investment (SI) interventions for working women, as it fosters gender equality through a better work-care balance. Women’s work-care balance issues are high on the SI agenda, because work-family reconciliation issues are considered a ‘new social risk’. However, while studies show a positive association between higher public childcare spending and higher maternal labour market participation, increased formal childcare provision does not necessarily mean that these SI policies are successful in helping working women achieve work-care balance. This article analyses how women with childcare responsibilities subjectively evaluate the experiences of combining childcare and work hours. Drawing on data from Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey, the study analyses the relationship between women's subjective assessment of balancing work and childcare and selected dimensions of work hours and childcare: childcare mode (formal/informal), childcare gap (the length of time between the end of parental leave entitlement and the start of childcare entitlement), satisfaction with childcare quality, cost difficulty, and childcare intensity (number of hours per week a child is in childcare). The study focuses only on employed women, working either full-time or part-time, with childcare responsibilities in the EU (27) and the UK. The results challenge the existing SI framework because they show that the objectives of SI policies are not automatically achieved through providing formal childcare services, suggesting that without considering preexisting gendered cultural norms and the cost of formal childcare, they may not meet the expected outcomes.