The article "Gendered late working life trajectories, family history and welfare regimes " published in the European Journal of Ageing has been awarded the Best Paper Award of Section III for Social and Behavioural Gerontology of the "Deutschen Gesellschaft für Gerontologie und Geriatrie" (DGGG). The DGGG presents the Best Paper Award for "excellent publications by young researchers".

WiSo doctoral student Wiebke Schmitz, Laura Naegele, Frerich Frerichs and Lea Ellwardt (Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology (ISS)) used around 21,500 cases from the retrospective SHARELIFE survey to analyse different types of gender-specific employment patterns of men and women over 65 from 28 European countries and how these employment patterns in later working life are related to earlier family events and the employment decisions based on them. The researchers also tested whether the relationship between early family history and later employment differed in differently organised welfare systems.

The results showed that the course of late working life differs drastically depending on gender. Women's late working lives are characterised either by unpaid care work or by paid (full-time or part-time) work. Men's late working lives, on the other hand, are mainly characterised by continuous full-time work. Earlier family events, i.e. a higher average number of children over the years and more time in a civil partnership earlier in life, were positively associated with unpaid housework or part-time work for women, but negatively associated with full-time employment later in life. For men, however, the same family events had no or even an inverse relationship with employment, i.e. the probability of full-time employment was greater for men. Family events thus had a greater impact on women than men until late in their working lives, particularly in conservative and southern welfare systems that either support continuous full-time employment as the norm for men but not necessarily for women, or are characterised by a lack of public social infrastructure and cultural contexts (e.g. traditional gender roles).

The researchers conclude that policy makers need life-course and gender-orientated strategies to promote employment in order to mitigate women's disadvantage in late-life integration. Greater integration of women into the labour market is necessary to mitigate the shortage of skilled workers in the wake of demographic change. The implementation of new policy measures should aim in particular to prevent social inequalities in the earlier stages of life, as employment decisions influenced by earlier family events and associated career decisions accumulate over the course of life, especially on the part of mothers.

We warmly congratulate Wiebke Schmitz and her co-authors around Prof Dr Lea Ellwardt on this award.

• Article "Gendered late working life trajectories, family history and welfare regimes: evidence from SHARELIFE"
• Find an Expert page of Prof Dr Lea Ellwardt