One of the most significant societal changes of the past decades is the rise in female labor force participation. However, still the labor force participation of women lags far behind that of men, when the degree of employment is considered. Thus, time restrictions due to family responsibilities seem to still present one of the main obstacles for women’s employment.

Against this background the question arises, to what extent the outsourcing of domestic labor, for example by hiring a household help, might present a viable solution for women to reconcile family responsibilities with employment.

The investigation of the interrelation between household gender arrangement, domestic labor and employment promises specific insights into how structural and normative aspects interact to produce the observed employment patterns. Using an unique representative dataset collected for evaluation of a program of the German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youths (N= 1312) this article seeks to provide theoretical and empirical evidence on the effects of hiring a household help for female labor market decisions in Germany. In particular the dataset contains several items that were specifically included into the survey for addressing outsourcing issues. Moreover, we exploit the quasi-experimental design of the study and qualitative data collected during the program participation to access the normative components of household labor.

The results reveal that outsourcing, program participation and work attachment are closely interrelated and that for all three processes beside economic determinants gender roles and gender identity play a crucial role.

In Germany, availability of institutional child care is still limited and lower than in several other European countries. Although in recent years there have been improvements, particularly in the Western part of the country (where provision rates were traditionally lower than in the Eastern part), institutional child care for children under three years of age is not available for the majority of children. Since child care is a prerequisite for maternal employment, it is also important for families’ financial status.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between attitudes towards maternal employment and institutional child care with actual market behaviour, the extent of labour supply and usage of institutional child care. Do these attitudes shape behaviour or do other socio-economic (e.g., qualification) and structural factors (e.g., service provision, region) limit maternal employment and therefore leave families at risk of poverty?

In the analysis we use the fifth wave of the German panel study “Labour Market and Social Security”, a representative sample of individuals and households, which includes specific questions on these attitudes. We pay special attention to household contexts (lone parents, number of children, partners’ employment status) and regional differences, since East and West Germans traditionally differ with respect to gender-role attitudes, provision of institutional child care and labour market conditions. The aim is a description of the aforementioned attitudes and their differences among population subgroups as well as an estimation of their effects on behaviour vis-à-vis other determinants in a series of regression analyses.