FENICS
Female Employment in National Institutional Contexts

Data sources

The FENICs programme is essentially a quantitative research programme. Through the analysis of large scale and complex datasets the teams are attempting to measure, monitor, compare and contrast the nature and extent of the links between female employment and family formation.

Two distinct and complementary approaches have been adopted. The first of these approaches makes use of information which consists of a series of cross-sectional views of the population of the European Union – the EU Labour Force Surveys. While these data are not available for all countries at the level of individual observations, the Nanterre team, under the direction of Professor Jacques Zighera, has elaborated very detailed cross-tabulations from this source, covering the period 1984-1998. Using innovative log-linear modelling techniques, this source enables much detailed analysis to be undertaken, comparing results for each member state.

The second approach relies upon access to individual–level longitudinal survey data, which contain information on family formation and employment-related events. A number of different sources are being investigated by the teams at the Universities of Bielefeld, Barcelona and Warwick:

British Household Panel Study 1991-1999

German Socio-economic Panel 1987-1998

Fertility and Family Surveys (1992-1994)

European Community Household Panel