Political Scientist
Research Projects
Increasingly, work-family policies are recognized as key to mitigating socioeconomic conflicts, yet their effectiveness has only recently been explored in a broader comparative perspective. The A06 project investigates: (1) How do family policies impact women’s and children’s socioeconomic outcomes? (2) When and how do policy actors adopt information on these socioeconomic outcomes, leading to policy learning? Using a mixed-methods approach, the project combines impact evaluation across world regions with comparative case studies on family-policy learning in Global North and South contexts.
Research Outputs:
Son, Keonhi, Ahn Tran, and Sonja Drobnic. forthcoming. "Kinship, Family and Community Networks." In The Oxford Handbook of Social Policies in the Global South, edited by A. Barrientos, M. Carnes,H. J. Kwon, H. Obinger, L. Patel, and C. Schmitt, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Son, Keonhi. 2025. "Discrepancy of Social Insurance between Laws and Practices: Implementation Challenges of Maternity Leave in 73 Low- and Middle-Income Countries." Global Social Policy 25 (2): 254-272, https://doi.org/10.1177/14680181251324061.
Son, Keonhi. 2024. "Ship of Theseus: From ILO Standards to Outcome of Maternity Protection Policy." Journal of Social Policy 53 (1): 189-217. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000010.
Son, Keonhi. 2023. "Do International Treaties Only Have an Impact on Ratifying States?: The Influence of the ILO Maternity Protection Conventions in 160 States, 1883 until 2018." International Labour Review 162 (2): 245-269. http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12371.
Son, Keonhi. 2022. "Colonialism and Paid Maternity Leave Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa." In Research Handbook on Leave Policy: Parenting and Social Inequalities in a Global Perspective, edited by I. Dobrotić, S. Blum and A. Koslowski, 310-323. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Böger, Tobias, Keonhi. Son, and Simone Tonelli. 2022. "Origins of Family Policy: Prerequisites or Diffusion." In Networks and Geographies of Global Social Policy Diffusion, edited by Michael Windzio, Ivo Mossig, Fabian Besche-Truthe and Helen Seitzer, 169-193. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Son, Keonhi, and Tobias Böger. 2021. "The Inclusiveness of Maternity Leave Rights over 120 Years and across Five Continents." Social Inclusion 9 (2): 275-287.
http://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i2.3785.
Son, Keonhi., Böger, Tobias., Tonelli, Simone., Buhr, Petra., Drobnič, Sonja., & Huinink, Johannes. (2020). 2020. Codebook of Historical Database on Maternity Leave (HDML). SFB 1342 (Bremen). http://doi.org/10.26092/elib/2110.
Figure 1. The introduction of paid maternity leave in the world
As shown in Nobel Prize awarded to Claudia Goldin in 2023, the increasing role of women in market economies is followed by a more attention to the early history of women’s economic activities. However, welfare and labor legislations for women have been rarely studied in the historical context, despite their significant influence on women’s economic empowerment.
To fill this gap, I will investigate the early history of women’s labor and social rights with a focus on welfare policies, protective legislations, and legal barriers to women’s economic participation in European welfare states from 1883 until 1980.
Research Outputs:
Son, Keonhi. 2025. "Gender Cleavage and Political Parties in 19 Welfare States, 1900–1975". Journal of European Public Policy, 32(11), 2663–2688. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2024.2439562
Son, Keonhi. 2024. "The Origin of Social Policy for Women Workers: The Emergence of Paid Maternity Leave in Western Countries." Comparative Political Studies 57 (1): 69-100. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231169024.
