Eric D. Widmer

Levy, R. Gauthier,J.-A., Widmer, E.D. (2007). Entre contraintes institutionnelle et domestique: Les parcours de vie masculins et féminins en Suisse. Revue canadienne de sociologie, vol. 31, n° 4, pp. 461-489.

This study analyzes occupational trajectories in Switzerland on the basis of hypotheses about standardization, individualization and gendering of life courses which are often related to the increasing and later decreasing influence of the welfare state that accompanies the reinforced influence of neoliberal policies. It is based on the retrospective data of the Swiss household panel collected in 2002. Sequence analyses show that female trajectories are at a time more varied and more sensitive to factors such as education, number of children, and birth cohort, than male trajectories which are comparatively more stable and homogenous. The standardization, individualization, and gendering hypotheses can only partially account for the existence of the differentiated trajectories we find and should be completed by the principle of gendered master statuses that is informed by the perspective of linked lives and the feminist critique of life-course sociology.

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