"Fragmentation of social policies remain a key explanation of gender inequality".

Mara Yerkes in her keynote at "Breaking silos, building futures.
Policy innovations for integrated family and child support"

@odiseehogeschool.bsky.social @cofaceeu.bsky.social

"To a child seeking help, labels on the doors mean nothing. To them, it matters how the health/social workers are as a person."

Maria Kaisa Aula (Welfare area of Central Finland) on the importance of trust in welfare provision.

@cofaceeu.bsky.social @odiseehogeschool.bsky.social

In the conclusion, we critically reflect on our own role in taking on this commissioned work, the importance that policy makers involve academics already at the design stage of the tender/commissioned work, and the importance of methodological pluralism.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Blindspot 5: The various forms of publication bias.

Countries known for extensive provision of ECEC were overrepresented. This means that the evidence base for the revision of the Barcelona targets might be the weakest for those countries that might be furthest away from achieving them.

Blindspot 4: The focus on individual-level rather than macro-level outcomes.

Reform studies focus on individual-level outcomes, which facilitates causal inference but overlooks higher-order outcomes and thus the relationship between ECEC and important societal developments.

Blindspot 3: The focus on short-term outcomes.

Many studies in the ECEC reform database examined the immediate and short-term effects of policy changes. Only a few reform studies included in the database have examined how long it takes for implemented policy reforms to have an effect.

Blindspot 2: The limited focus on reducing inequality in the use and benefits of ECEC.

Yet, reform studies are silent on the degree of cross-country inequality in ECEC use. Consequently, which aspects of ECEC policy lead to an increase or decrease in inequality in ECEC use remains unknown.

Blindspot 1: The context-specific nature of reform studies.

Focusing on excluding ‘confounding’, reform studies generally focus on a single country, and are less able to explain how to increase effectiveness depends on its interplay with other institutional and structural conditions.

Our commissioned focus was very much on reform studies. The value of such studies to isolate the causal effect is indisputable, but a tradeoff is that these reforms studies tend to be empirically narrow.

We kept wondering: “What are we missing?”.

So, we reflected on five blindspots:

At breakneck speed, with a very short deadline, we delivered the work, and a report (available here: data.europa.eu/doi/10.2838/...)

The report has interesting findings, we think, and demonstrated again how important the accessibility, affordability and quality of childcare policies are.

It started out as a report commissioned report by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (@ec.europa.eu). We created a database of ECEC reform studies, in preparation of the revised Barcelona Targets (on childcare).

This new publication of ours, with Mara Yerkes, Lovisa Backman and @jstrigen.bsky.social is a fun one, I think.

"Five blindspots in reform studies of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy”
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Please apply! PhD position @sofi.su.se. Stockholm University ERC-funded project, Making Time: Organized Labour and the Politics of Care Leave. MA degree (or near completion) and quant training required. 1 Oct deadline, start Jan 2026. See: su.varbi.com/what:job/job....

Five blindspots in reform studies of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy

New paper in @actasociologica.bsky.social with Mara Yerkes, Lovisa Backman and @jstrigen.bsky.social

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

@abrarbawati.bsky.social presenting @reusilience.bsky.social results from ongoing work titled “From Origin to Destination: How Migration Shapes the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty in Europe”.

#espanet

Mary Daly @dspi-oxford.bsky.social presenting the recently published @reusilience.bsky.social book of ours at the ESPAnet. Available at www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook-o...
@rnieuwenhuis.bsky.social @ivanadobrotic.bsky.social @margaleon.bsky.social @wvlancker.bsky.social @thaning.bsky.social

Mary Daly from @dspi-oxford.bsky.social presenting key insights from the @reusilience.bsky.social book “Families, Welfare States and Resilience” at #ESPAnet

www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook-o...

While Sweden’s institutionalised power relations remained stable, Finland and the Netherlands experienced temporary shifts, with governments bypassing the social partners on health-related issues. The health-care sector and precarious workers emerged as especially vulnerable.

Drawing on 30 interviews with representatives of social partner organisations and government agencies, as well as labour market experts, we demonstrate strong institutional stability and path dependence in industrial relations during the crisis.

Institutionalised power or crisis corporatism? Comparing Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic

New paper by @jstrigen.bsky.social, @rnieuwenhuis.bsky.social, @minnavangerven.bsky.social Zamzam Elmi and Aino Salmi.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

So pleased with the feedback & recommendations. In this new work, I am exploring whether the childcare gap matters for maternal employment from a macro perspective using country-year panel data. Early findings suggest it matters for the intensity of employment rather than the overall choice of it.

Toon Van Havere gave such a great presentation that I forgot to take a picture. In the @reusilience.bsky.social project, he bravely ventures into policy interplays and context specificity of childcare out-of-pocket costs and child-contingent benefits: osf.io/preprints/so...

@merveuzunalioglu.bsky.social presenting novel @reusilience.bsky.social data and analyses on the childcare gap.

Getting an #ESPAnet conference off the ground is no small feat - thanks to the organizing team!