Occupation and Family Responsibilities: Mothers Are they Still Lose their Job Quality?
Whether in Quebec, Canada or elsewhere in other OECD countries, women are now very active in the labour market, even when they have young children. However, the literature reveals that there are still signifi cant gendered diff erences in regard to working and employment conditions. To shed new light on gendered occupational inequality, a quantitative analysis of changes in job quality in Québec was made based on two important parameters for diff erentiation of gender identifi ed in the literature: the degree of education and family status. The concept of job quality used here takes into account four basic dimensions: wage, working hours, qualifi cation and stability. In the analysis, a new typology of job quality composed of 12 groups is used in order to appropriately reflect the different modes of integration in the labour market. The analysis of results, which covers the period 1997-2007, shows that there has been an improvement in women's job quality whatever their level of education or their family situation; this resulted in a reduction the gap with men. However, the reductions were most pronounced in the case of people without family responsibilities (decreases ranging between 33 % and 44 %) but remained much more limited for those with young children (decreases ranging between 14 % and 15 %). Specifi cally, women with a high human capital (university degree) and having no family responsibilities have greatly improved their situation in comparison with their male counterparts, whereas those with signifi cant family responsibilities and holding the same level of schooling did not improve their situation as much.