Contextual framework

Abstract

This chapter introduces the contextual framework of the research. More precisely, it explains how WFLR has turned into a highly contested policy area across European welfare states, but particularly in Germany and Turkey. Here, the discussion focuses on how and why Germany experienced a similar path to the rest of Europe, where WFLR policies have emerged as a concomitant result of women’s increasing labour market participation, while they have been introduced in the Turkish context as part of Turkey’s EU-accession process. Since, in one form or another, various risks and inequalities emerged in almost all EU member states, the EU has acknowledged the importance of WFLR policies and placed an increasing focus on reconciliation policy-making. This particular policy sphere, which had formerly been left to national level initiatives, has therefore gradually become an area of greater cohesion. EU documents have begun to require a relatively stronger convergence from member and candidate states, which has eventually prompted them to reconfigure their existing reconciliation models. Section two of this chapter, accordingly, focuses on the EU and examines the EU rationale behind reconciliation policy-making, including an outline of EU legislation regarding WFLR. As the main aim of this research is to compare how German and Turkish WFLR models have changed under the EU influence, it is also important to look at their national models prior to their Europeanisation processes. Sections three and four concentrate on the WFLR models that the two selected countries pursued up until 2000. Section three presents the German reconciliation model prior to EU influence while the last section presents the Turkish model.