Background and goal of the study

This study is the result of a long, interactive research process conducted over the last 20 years. During this time, the ‘combination of professional and family work’ has become a major policy issue in modern democratic welfare states. It is a central motor of the daily life of men and women within their families and within other organisations. An efficient ‘combination policy’, therefore, needs a consistent and effective policy programme for all relevant societal fields.

Chapter 1 explored the background and the central goal of this study, that is, to show that the Combination Model is a useful instrument for all democratic countries, first, for the study of the daily division of labour between men and women, and second, for the development of an integrated policy programme. The Combination Model is a broad scientific instrument based on the permanent interaction between the conceptual, empirical and normative dimension/approach. It was not developed in isolation in Flanders/Belgium, but alongside similar integrating models that were put forward in other countries, starting from the same basic challenge but situated against the specific societal and scientific background. We first examined the transitional labour markets model that was launched by Günther Schmid, mainly from traditional labour market research in economics and sociology (Schmid, 1997, 1998, 2002a, 2002b; Schmid and Gazier, 2002; Schmid and Schomann, 2004). Next, we looked at the flexicurity model that was introduced by research groups in the Netherlands and Denmark (Wilthagen and Tros, 2004; Wilthagen et al, 2004; Madsen, 2006; van den Heuvel et al, 2006). Within the context of the US we focused on the dual earner/dual carer model that was launced by Crompton (1999) and that was further explained and applied by Gornick and Meyers (2003, 2004a, 2004b). This model was partially inspired by Fraser's future models (1994, 2006): starting from a critical evaluation of the universal breadwinner model and the caregiver parity model, she introduces the universal caregiver model as a new promising future policy model that combines the strong elements of the two former models. We also mentioned the mass career customisation model presented by Benko and Weisberg (2007), from the perspective of organisations.

During the past years, the Combination Model has consequently been examined further and applied to a broader societal context.