ABSTRACT
Family policies to reduce conflict in work-life balance and promote gender equality advanced significantly at the legislative level in Spain in the first decades of the twenty-first century. These advances include the 2007 Law for Equality between Men and Women and the extension of paternity leave to 16 weeks in 2020. However, advances in care work and at the professional level have been limited. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified existing imbalances in family-work responsibilities in general and the ICT gender gap in particular. In crisis situations, women adopt the role of caregivers more easily than men, and women with fewer educational, economic, and job resources are more likely to assume this role, contributing to increasing gender inequalities at work and in the family. COVID-19 has exposed these imbalances, highlighting the need for new narratives and laws that encourage gender equality. Post-COVID-19 scenarios thus present an opportunity for reflection and progress on Spanish family policy. From this perspective, the paradigm of work-family conflict, although interesting, must be examined and resignified. This article proposes to critically resignify the paradigm of work-family conflict based on the new narrative generated by COVID-19. The present analysis suggests a resignification that should involve changing the expectations and practices around work-family balance, based on family diversity, job insecurity, the technological revolution, and new masculinities. It is proposed a prior reflection to clarify definition of the indicators and indexes that enable operationalization of the concept of work-family reconciliation. It is expected that these measures will help to facilitate practical application of reconciliation in areas such as public or/and private organizations, while also enabling international comparative analysis.
ABSTRACT
This work examines whether the increase of single parenthood in Italy and Spain, specifically amongst women in an unfavourable socioeconomic position, has repercussions for child well-being, understood here as material deprivation. In particular, our main objective is to analyse the possible differential impact of single parenthood on children's material deprivation in relation to mothers' level of education. Using the 2014 EU-SILC Module on material deprivation, we identify five areas of child deprivation based on the EU-MODA approach: nutrition, clothing, education, leisure, and social life. In the case of Italy, our main results indicate that, compared to children from two-parent households, children of single mothers with a low level of education have a higher risk of nutrition and clothing deprivation. In Spain, living in a single-parent household is associated with a higher risk of deprivation in terms of social life for those children whose mothers do not have a high level of education. Therefore, the findings suggest that in both countries the growth of single parenthood amongst women with a lower educational level may have an impact on child well-being inequality. This article contributes empirical data to the growing literature on the rise of child poverty in Southern European countries.
ABSTRACT
Post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) is a worldwide distributed disease of multifactorial origin and porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) has been identified as its essential infectious aetiology. Pig genetic background has been pointed to influence disease expression. In the present study, three different boar lines, namely A (100% Pietrain), B (50% Large White × 50% Pietrain) and C (25% Large White × 75% Duroc), were used to inseminate sows from the same genetic line (37.5% Large White × 37.5% Duroc × 25% Landrace) located on two PMWS-affected farms (farm-1 and farm-2). The PMWS clinical expression of their offspring was studied from weaning to slaughter, evaluating three parameters: total post-weaning mortality (PWM), PWM associated to PMWS (PMWS-PWM) and body weight (BW) evolution. The effect of other variables potentially related with PMWS, including sow and piglet PCV2 exposure, sow parity, piglet gender and piglet BW at weaning, were also considered in the study design. Overall, a total of 6.5% PWM and 4.3% PMWS-PWM occurred in the monitored farms. Pigs from boar line C showed the highest PWM (16.3%) and PMWS-PWM (12.4%), and the lowest BW; pigs from boar line A showed the lowest PWM (1.8%) and the highest BW. Furthermore, PWM was also higher in piglets from farm-2 and from multiparous sows. In farm-2, PMWS-PWM was higher in piglets from multiparous sows. Finally, BW was influenced by interactions between genetics and both farm and pig age, and was lower in piglets from farm-2. This study represents a consistent observation of the genetic background effect on PMWS clinical expression under field conditions.
