Professor Anna Kurowska’s Article in the Journal of European Social Policy

An article by Professor Anna Kurowska, Ph.D., D.Sc., from the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw, co-authored with Dimitrina Ivanova, a fellow in one of the National Science Centre projects led by Professor Kurowska, has been published in the Journal of European Social Policy.

The publication addresses the issue of inequalities in access to childcare and parental leave rights, proposing a new approach to the typology of care regimes. The authors integrate the perspective of (de)familialization with an analysis of inequalities in access to benefits, while also incorporating a gender dimension—examining not only the scope of rights but also who can actually exercise them.

For the first time, the typology of European childcare systems has been expanded beyond the model of the “average family”—a working couple—to include the situation of unemployed couples. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of variations in access to care and benefits among groups more exposed to social exclusion.

The article also applies an innovative methodological approach—fuzzy clustering—which has not previously been used in comparative social policy research.

The article is available in open access https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09589287251386678