I am a research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). My core research question is how states govern women’s labor, and how such policy outcomes influence women’s lives. I explore the politics and policies surrounding women’s labor in different historical and geographical contexts, with a particular focus on political parties, female representation, and work-family policies.

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In my Habilitation project, I examine the historical origins of women's labor and social rights in advanced capitalist societies, tracing the socio-economic and political factors that historically shaped state governance of women's labor from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. My papers, published in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and Journal of Social Policy, provide novel evidence of women's significant political influence on gender policymaking under specific institutional settings and political landscapes. They demonstrate that the descriptive representation of women in parliaments helped shape the contours of women's social rights shortly after women attained suffrage. Related works explore the political interests of female parliamentarians, women's movements, and female voters, as well as their strategies for advocating gender policies in the early 20th century.

 

For the research project "Work-family Policies: Socioeconomic Outcomes and Policy Learning," part of the Collaborative Research Center 1342 (CRC 1342) “Global Dynamics of Social Policy,” I will, as Principal Investigator, evaluate the impact of family policies on alleviating the work-family challenges faced by women workers in the Global South, drawing on my original databases. Previously, I built two historical databases capturing maternity, paternity, and parental leave policies in 165 countries from 1883 to 2018.

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I hold a Ph.D. from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). I previously visited the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and is currently a visiting scholar at Sciences Po, Paris.