We invite applications for a PhD position in the SCOOP research centre on sustainable cooperation. As a PhD candidate you will be working on a project entitled “Sticky Practices: The co-evolution of early years childcare, parental leave and women’s labour force participation” under the supervision of Sarah Carmichael, Robert Vonk and Tanja van der Lippe. The project aims to look at how the care of young children is arranged, and what this means for gendered division of labour.
 
Early childhood education and care is a topic that receives attention both for its contributions to improving later schooling and development outcomes of the children themselves, and as an essential service for working parents (as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic). Reliable and widely available childcare is also essential to enable women’s work in particular. However, how this is provided, what the uptake is and what the further impact is on parental working patterns differs across countries. Given current Dutch proposals to make childcare free or heavily subsidised, this topic is pertinent to assess policy. This project aims to look at how (pre-)school childcare institutions have co-evolved with norms around mother’s work, maternity and paternity leave, postnatal care, etc. You will compare several countries representing a number of different child-care provision regimes and parental leave arrangements over the long-term to determine how various critical junctures have affected outcomes today. This will be done by research into the historical evolution and path dependency of these norms and arrangements.
 
The vacancy and more details can be found on the site of University Utrecht, application deadline 7th of July. https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-on-care-for-young-children-and-gendered-division-of-labour