The gender informal care gap. A fuzzy set analysis of cross-country variations

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between the ‘gender informal care gap’ – the relative contributions of women to informal care for non-co-resident relatives and other members of social networks, compared to men – and public care policies, level of care needs, labour market position and gendered care attitudes. Since the literature suggests that none of these factors alone can explain the gender informal care gap, we develop a model based on fuzzy-set/qualitative comparative analysis in order to identify patterns in the relationship between the factors. The analysis conducted at the macro-national level in 13 European countries, suggests that at the macro-level, the availability of public care services is crucial to understanding the gender informal care gap, while women's labour market position, the presence or absence of gendered care attitudes and the level of care needs play no or a relatively minor role.