ABSTRACT Women's work-time pattern in Europe is highly heterogeneous; some women work short or long part-time hours, while others work full-time. Few studies, however, have analysed the factors constituting women's work-time pattern. The article aims to explain why women's working time differs in five relatively big European cities, which represent an urban environment that is particularly supportive to women's employment, and the study is based on a new original telephone survey from 2013 among women 25–64 years of age. It is hypothesized and analysed how women's work-time pattern is the result of women's family-cultural orientation, individual and family characteristic, the gendered division of household task, women's position in the vertical and horizontal division of labour, and city of residence. Findings support the theoretical assumptions that there is a significant relationship between family-cultural orientation and work practices.

ABSTRACT The EU discourse on increasing female employment holds promise. The integration of women into the labour market supposedly supports economic growth, social cohesion, and citizenship. The question is, however, whether the expected consequences of female employment are consistent with reality. Using the EU discourse as a point of departure, this paper scrutinises the effects of female employment from a citizenship perspective in three European cities: Aalborg (Denmark), Leeds (England), and Bologna (Italy). Using survey data collected in the three cities, it quantitatively analyses whether employment counteracts poverty, supports social and political participation, and increases social trust. It also analyses whether there are spill-over effects from the different dimensions of citizenship; that is, whether poverty leads to social isolation, political apathy, and low levels of social trust. We find that unemployment is important for citizenship but that the differences between employed women and women outside the labour force are rather limited. We also find that the effect of a woman's position in the vertical and horizontal division of labour is rather limited, and no spill-over effects from economic hardship on other dimensions of citizenship exist. What matters for citizenship are personal and family characteristics as well as the city of residence.

The article discusses ‘activation’ in Denmark and Norway from an ‘active society’ perspective. The argument forwarded is that activation in the two Nordic countries shows continuity over the last 50 years, where Denmark and Norway have shared much of the same policy rationale or logic. At the same time there have been discrepancies in the activation opportunities, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. Such differences should be understood in terms of differences in the level and structure of unemployment in the two countries. All too often, changes in policy programmes and related ‘discourses’ have been evaluated without taking the changing labour-market conditions into account. On occasion this has led to too hasty or imbalanced conclusions. In part this has led to a misrepresentation of the relatively generous welfare benefit regime in Denmark during the 1980s, and in part to exaggeration of the alleged ‘repressive’ or unreasonable nature of the welfare-policy reforms in Denmark in the 1990s.