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Project

Quality of employment trajectories and mental health: the role of gender and social norms (FWOTM1001)

Two research challenges are present in the study of employment quality (i.e. the conditions and relations of employment) as a health determinant: ambiguous definitions of the original concept and a lack of insight into the pathways through which low-quality employment arrangements harms worker mental health. Therefore, a novel approach within this field will be introduced: the construction of a typology of trajectories of employment arrangements. Moreover, I will probe into the moderating role of individual- and societal-level social norms for the relation between quality of employment trajectories and
mental health. Social norms have been suggested to play a buffering role, but it has never been directly studied. Because of the abundant presence of gender norms in society, the proposed research will be conducted with a gender perspective.

Three research objectives are central:
1) Investigating the causal relation between a typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and mental health;
2) Examining gender differences in the relation between the typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and mental health;
3) Investigating whether social norms moderate the longitudinal relation between health and the typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and the gender inequalities therein. For this purpose, the German SocioEconomic Panel, a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of
private households in Germany, is used.
Date:1 Nov 2020 →  Today
Keywords:employment quality, mental health, social norms
Disciplines:Sociology of gender and gender relations, Sociology of health