A study of five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) has found that parents, who work part-time for less than ten years, will still receive 98 to 99 per cent of the maximum pension. The report, presented at the NIKK conference Part Time in the Nordic Region, explains that in the pension systems in all Nordic countries parents are compensated for their temporarily lower hours. The researchers also note that this is not the case for part-time workers who are not parents, people who work part-time for more than ten years and people who work very few hours. Almost in parallel with this study the World Economic Forum published a Global Gender Gap Report in which is described that, with strong trade unions present that tended to promote gender equality, the Nordic countries became modern social democratic states where wealth is more evenly distributed, education is typically free up through university, and the social safety net allows women to comfortably work and raise a family.
English: http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/i-fokus/november-2012 ...
Focus on the Global Gender Gap Report: http://www.weforum.org/news/increased-political ...
http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2013/
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.