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This paper investigates how gender attitudes relate to the new cultural divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians in Europe, which is largely defined by immigration and EU attitudes. We examine how gender attitudes vary across this divide, how large and diverse the groups are that hold different combinations of these attitudes, and how these patterns differ between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using data from the European Values Study 2017 (EVS), we conduct a latent profile analysis to investigate the most common of nine possible combinations of attitudes regarding gender, immigration, and the EU. We find different patterns of attitudinal variation across Western Europe and CEE. In Western Europe, we find substantial divisions over gender attitudes across profiles, but not over immigration and EU attitudes. In CEE, we find disagreement over immigration attitudes coupled with centrist EU attitudes and ambivalent gender attitudes that differ gradually across profiles. In both regions, gender attitudes appear to cross-cut attitudes relating to the new cultural divide. Our study reveals how gender attitudes interact with other ideologies within individuals and across regions in Europe. These findings have implications for understanding how socio-cultural values shape political behavior and preferences in Europe.

After decades in which gender relations, as anchored in work-family policies and egalitarian gender ideologies, moved towards greater equality, the status quo is currently being challenged. Gender-ambivalent ideologies have spread in both the political and private realms. It is unclear how the rise in gender-ambivalence documented in current research relates to party identification. On the one hand, gender ambivalence may represent a variation of post-materialist liberal values corresponding with support for centre-left parties in Germany. On the other, ambivalence may reflect a modified form of traditionalism and thus, a step to the left among voters leaning towards right-wing and conservative parties. This paper uses the Leitbild Survey 2012 to provide empirical evidence to fill this research gap. In line with cross-national research, latent class analyses reveal four main gender ideologies among young Germans: unidimensional ‘egalitarian’ and ‘moderate traditional’, as well as ambivalent, multidimensional ‘secondary earner’, and ‘intensive parenting’. Multinomial regression models show that egalitarian class members identify with centre-left parties while members of the ambivalent, multidimensional secondary earner, and intensive parenting classes as well as those of the moderate traditional class identify more strongly with centre-right parties. In light of the broader literature on gender ideology change, which documents a steep decline in traditionalism, our cross-sectional findings may be interpreted as capturing a step to the left among voters leaning towards right-wing and conservative parties in Germany, who now accept new mothers combining care-giving and part-time-work.

Whereas attitudinal polarization has become a hot topic for academic debates in the USA over recent decades, the question of whether, and over which issues, European countries are polarized has so far received limited scholarly attention. Existing studies focus on single countries and different types of attitudinal polarization, not allowing for cross-national comparisons. This article provides such a comparison of the state of attitudinal polarization across 21 EU member states. Using the EVS-2017 data, we study three types of attitudinal polarization (disagreement, issue alignment, and sorting) over five key attitudinal dimensions: social inequality, immigration, EU-integration, gender, and environment. Contrary to prominent claims of a polarized Europe, our findings indicate medium levels of opinion disagreement, low levels of alignment and low but slightly higher levels of sorting. We further find that different types of attitudinal polarization do not coincide with each other on a country level but do produce geographical clusters. Polarization as disagreement is higher in the East and South of Europe, while issue alignment and sorting are higher in the North and West. Looking at the three types of polarization together, immigration is slightly more divisive than other dimensions. However, contrary to the new cultural cleavage expectations, disagreement over social inequality is still remarkably high, especially in the South and East of Europe.

Contains fulltext : 290578.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In this paper, we use the "gender as a social structure" framework to assess macro-, interactional-, and micro-level mechanisms explaining the stalled revolution in gender ideologies. Using the European Values Study 2008 data and latent class analysis, we look at the spread of gender ideologies and examine their association with national levels of gendered ascription of work and care roles, work–family compatibility, social inequality and societal affluence, individual characteristics, and cross-level interactions with gender and education in 36 (post-)industrialized countries. By including a large number of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern European countries, we provide a new and comprehensive picture of the gender ideology landscapes of Europe, reflected in two unidimensional classes - egalitarian and traditional - and four multidimensional classes, covering more than 60 percent of respondents - family oriented, choice egalitarian, intensive motherhood, and neotraditional. By modeling key features of macro-level variation, we show how the spread of gender ideologies is associated with distinct contextual conditions. We consolidate previous findings on multidimensional gender ideologies, which were based on fewer countries. 31 p.

Background: Research suggests that women’s employment decisions are influenced by not only their own gender ideologies but also their partners’. This paper is the first study examining the role of a couple’s joint gender ideology on the female partner’s employment transitions, specifically her work hours and employment breaks. Objective: The authors seek to advance research on the effects of gender ideologies on paid work transitions conceptually, arguing that a couple’s (dis)agreement on gender ideologies may be important. Methods: The authors use data from the German panel study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) and logistic regression models estimating the probability of reducing work hours or taking an employment break between two successive panel waves. Results: Women’s gender ideologies impact their likelihood of reducing work hours and taking an employment break. The more egalitarian women are, the less likely they are to reduce their labor market participation. The male partner’s gender ideology initially appears irrelevant. However, when considering the couple as a unit, the authors find a couple effect of joint ideology: Women are more likely to reduce their work hours when both partners believe in gender essentialism as opposed to other couple-ideology constellations. For women’s employment breaks, findings also point to a couple-ideology effect, though with less statistical certainty. Conclusions: The couple perspective shows that his gender ideology matters only in relation to hers. Contribution: Introducing the couple perspective reveals that individual ideology measures provide a skewed picture of how gender ideologies actually work in couples to influence the gender division of paid work.

This article ties together key findings from a 12-year cross-national qualitative collaboration that involved researchers from nine European countries. Our comparative analysis draws on longitudinal heterosexual couple data, in which both partners were interviewed first, during pregnancy, and second, between six months and two-and-a-half years after childbirth. We tackle the relational ties that shape family practices from a lifecourse perspective, emphasising the interdependent construction of motherhood and fatherhood identities, couples’ institutional embeddedness and linked lives. Analysing the data by combining the relationality and lifecourse perspectives brings forth how women and men enact agency in a constrained environment while making consequential decisions about their own, their partners’ and children’s futures. Whereas the gender culture provides parents with arguments and discourses to motivate their work-care plans, the policy context limits how new parents interact as they seek to escape or cope with institutionally prescribed gender divisions of work and care.

This paper examines the factors associated with a gendered division of childcare among parents in Germany. While much is known on the gender division of housework in families and the economic and s...

The authors argue, in line with recent research, that operationalizing gender ideology as a unidimensional construct ranging from traditional to egalitarian is problematic and propose an alternative framework that takes the multidimensionality of gender ideologies into account. Using latent class analysis, they operationalize their gender ideology framework based on data from the 2008 European Values Study, of which eight European countries reflecting the spectrum of current work-family policies were selected. The authors examine the form in which gender ideologies cluster in the various countries. Five ideology profiles were identified: egalitarian, egalitarian essentialism, intensive parenting, moderate traditional, and traditional. The five ideology profiles were found in all countries, but with pronounced variation in size. Ideologies mixing gender essentialist and egalitarian views appear to have replaced traditional ideologies, even in countries offering some institutional support for gendered separate spheres.

Der Beitrag motiviert ein Mixed-Methods-Design fur die soziologische Erforschung geschlechtsspezifischer arbeitsteiliger Prozesse beim Ubergang zur Elternschaft und beschreibt seine Umsetzung. Der Fokus liegt auf der Stichprobenstrategie, welche die Kombination zweier Formen von Langsschnittuntersuchungen ermoglichen soll. Beide Untersuchungen werden international vergleichend durchgefuhrt. Das Stichprobendesign spielt sowohl fur den internationalen Vergleich als auch fur die Ergebnisintegration eine zentrale Rolle. Ziel des komplementaren Forschungsdesigns ist die systematische Verknupfung einer Analyse sozialer Strukturen der (Re‑)Produktion geschlechtsspezifischer arbeitsteiliger Muster mit den subjektiven Handlungsmotivationen, Deutungen und Zielen, die diesen Mustern zugrunde liegen. Die kontextbezogene Analyse von qualitativen Interviews und strukturellen Handlungsmustern zeigt, dass die Agency werdender Eltern mit zunehmender Kongruenz von dominanten Geschlechterideologien und familienpolitischen Rahmenbedingungen gestarkt wird.

Swimming against the tide or going with the flow? Stories on work-care practices, parenting norms and the importance of policies in a changing Europe

This article assesses the impact of discontinuous work histories on young women’s occupational mobility in Germany, Sweden and the US. Women with continuous work histories are compared with those with gaps due to family leave, unemployment, or other reasons. The German Life History Study, the Swedish Level of Living Survey and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to estimate Cox regression models of the transition rate to downward or upward occupational mobility. The results indicate that US women face increased downward mobility with increasing duration of both family leave and unemployment. German women with unemployment experience are also more likely to encounter downward mobility, but no such relationship is found for family leave. In Sweden, family leave experience reduces the chances of upward mobility. Results question the human capital approach, according to which skills should deteriorate at the same rate independent of the reason for the leave.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTIONWhile the gender gap in the performance of housework has narrowed in many countries for which data are available, it remains universal and large (Sayer, 2010); not surprisingly, the quantitative research on domestic labor has emphasized its pervasiveness. Recently, however, researchers have begun to pay more attention to disparities in housework time among women, especially those related to economic inequality. Specifically, studies of the relationship between married and cohabiting women's earnings and time spent doing housework, which tended to emphasize women's economic resources relative to their male partners', has added a focus on women's own earnings. Employing representative data from the National Survey of Families and Households in the U.S. (NSFH), Gupta (2006, 2007) found that married and cohabiting women's individual earnings were negatively associated with the time they spent on everyday chores such as cooking and cleaning. Describing this relationship as "autonomy," Gupta speculated that it originated in women's use of their economic resources to purchase housework substitutes such as prepared meals and domestic help. Or perhaps women with higher earnings simply "opt out" of housework because substituting would violate gender norms ascribing to them the primary responsibility for its performance (Killewald, 2011).In contrast to most of the existing quantitative research emphasizing the gender gap in the performance of domestic labor, the autonomy model highlights the relationship of differences among women with disparities in their time spent doing housework. In particular it focuses on economic inequality-women with higher earnings are predicted to spend less time on housework than those with lower earnings. To examine its prevalence outside the U.S., we apply the autonomy model to two countries other than the U.S., namely the former West Germany and Sweden. Though these countries are broadly comparable to the U.S. as fellow "western" nations, they differ from it, and from each other, in key ways that are relevant to our test of the autonomy hypothesis. They are characterized by dissimilar levels of economic inequality, especially among women, and they feature quite distinct regimes of gender role norms and state policies that promote or inhibit women's labor force participation. We use individual level data to determine for each country the size of the "economic gap" among women in their housework time, which we define as the difference between the average number of hours spent on it by women at the highest and lowest deciles of their own earnings. Though we do not directly incorporate national measures of women's labor force participation, earnings inequality among women, or the cultural and policy dimensions relevant to the division of domestic labor into our models, these factors frame our expectations for each country as well as our interpretation of our findings.ARGUMENTThe quantitative literature on the relationship between women's earnings and housework in the U.S. has expanded over the last decade to include data from multiple countries. Like the earlier research on the U.S., however, it has tended to focus on women's earnings or income relative to their male partners'.2 (Bittman et al, 2003-Australia; Evertsson and Nermo, 2004-Sweden; Geist, 2009-Germany) However, a new strand of inquiry challenges this focus on women's relative earnings by theorizing women's individual earnings as being associated with their time spent on housework. Using nationally representative data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), Gupta (2006) found that in the U.S., women's own earnings mattered more for their housework time than did their relative earnings. Gupta dubbed this negative relationship between women's own earnings and time spent on domestic labor the "autonomy" model. This model predicts that a woman with low individual earnings will spend more time doing housework than one with high earnings, even if their earnings relative to their male partners' are equal. …

Contains fulltext : 174122.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents' perceived work-family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for child care and leave from paid work, are capable of reducing work-family conflict as well as the gender and educational gaps in work-family conflict. We use data from the European Social Survey 2010 for 20 countries and 5296 respondents (parents), extended with information on national policies for maternity and parental leave and child care support from the OECD Family Database. Employing multilevel analysis, we find that mothers and the higher educated report most work-family conflict. Policies supporting child care reduce the level of experienced work-family conflict; family leave policy appears to have no alleviating impact on working parents' work-family conflict. Our findings indicate that family policies appear to be unable to reduce the gender gap in conflict perception and even widen the educational gap in work-family conflict. 25 p.

In the 21st century, the division of housework remains gendered, with women on average still spending more time doing chores than their male partners. While research has studied why this phenomenon is so persistent, few studies have yet been able to assess the effect of gender ideology and socio-economic resources at the same time, usually due to data restrictions. We use data from the pairfam, a new and innovative German panel study, in order to test the effect of absolute and relative resources as well as his and her gender ideology on the division of housework. We employ a life course perspective and analyze trajectories of couples’ housework division over time, using multi-level random effects growth curve models. We find that an egalitarian gender ideology of both him and her significantly predicts more egalitarian division-trajectories, while neither absolute nor relative resources appear to have an effect on the division of housework over time. Furthermore, our results expand the literature by investigating how these processes differ among childless couples and couples who experience the first birth.

We analyze the impact of economic globalization and industry growth on the complexity of early work careers in Germany. We conceptualize complexity as the absolute number of employer changes, the regularity in the order of job changes, and the variability of the durations spent in different employment states. Results from empirical analyses based on the German Life History Study ( N = 5453) show only a small increase in the complexity of work careers over the last decades, but there was a shift in the prevalence of different career patterns. This suggests that effects of globalization might be counteracted or modified by other social changes that affected work careers in Germany during the last 60 years. In particular, we consider the possible impact of educational expansion, labor market restructuring, and women’s increased employment. We find no evidence that industry-specific economic globalization impacts the complexity of work careers, but we find a U-shaped relationship between industry growth and career complexity. Careers are slightly more complex in industries with high or low industry growth. We conclude that, while there has been a shift in career patterns over time, the impact of globalization on career stability is possibly overestimated.

Questo articolo descrive come il processo di flessibilizzazione del mercato del lavoro e l'attuale crisi economica abbiano modificato l'assetto occupazionale dei giovani in Danimarca dagli anni '80 del novecento al 2010. L'autrice si interroga se la flessibilizzazione abbia influenzato le decisioni di lungo termine dei giovani, quali l'unione di coppia, l'autonomizzazione dai genitori, la costruzione di una famiglia. Dai dati a disposizione sembra che il modello danese abbia successo, se paragonato alla maggior parte dei paesi che fanno parte dell'Oecd, in riferimento al basso incremento della disoccupazione giovanile. Non ci sono evidenze del fatto che i cambiamenti nell'economia danese abbiano condizionato decisioni relative alle unioni di coppia, alla formazione di una famiglia, alla fertilitŕ. Le politiche attive del lavoro unite a un mercato del lavoro flessibile sembrano distribuire i rischi occupazionali in modo più uniforme tra i giovani e le generazioni più anziane.

We compare the data obtained through time diaries and survey questions on time use. Based on German data, we assess the exchangeability of time diary and survey estimates for several statistics. We find that both measures yield rather consistent findings. We interpret this rather good congruence of our time budgets as a result of our decomposed survey questions.

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der beruflichen Entwicklung von Müttern mit ungleichen Bildungsressourcen in international vergleichender Perspektive. Wir untersuchen die Strategien zur Vereinbarkeit von Berufskarrieren und Elternschaft in Deutschland, USA und Schweden für Frauen mit unterschiedlichem Schulbildungsniveau. Die Analysen beruhen auf länderspezifischen Längsschnittdaten (GLHS-West, NLSY, LNU). Mit Hilfe ereignisanalytischer Verfahren untersuchen wir, wie lange Mütter mit unterschiedlichem Bildungsniveau nach der Geburt eines Kindes ihre Erwerbstätigkeit unterbrechen, ob die Rückkehr, so, wie in Elternzeit-Programmen vorgesehen, auf dem vorherigen beruflichen Prestigeniveau erfolgt und unter welchen Umständen Müttern mit hohem, mittleren und niedrigen Schulbildungsniveau der berufliche Statuserhalt gelingt. Die hoch gebildeten Mütter zeigen in allen drei Ländern die stärkste Arbeitsmarktbindung. In den USA sind fast die Hälfte der Mütter mit College Ausbildung kontinuierlich erwerbstätig, gegenüber einem Viertel der Mütter ohne High School Diplom. In Schweden unterbrechen Mütter für mindestens ein halbes Jahr, unabhängig vom Bildungsniveau. In Deutschland verzichtet ein Viertel der Mütter mit (Fach-)Abitur auf Elternzeit. Konsequenzen einer gesetzlichen Ausweitung der Unterbrechungszeiten sind in Deutschland und Schweden weitgehend bildungsunabhängig. In den USA kehren mittel- und hochqualifizierte Mütter nach Einführung des FMLA langsamer auf gleichwertige Positionen zurück.

In this article, we address the current debate of increasing work life flexibility in (West-) Germany. In order to shed some light on the contradiction between a widely accepted decrease in work life stability and empirical findings that do not confirm such a decline, we contrast "objective" evidence from occupational trajectories with "subjective" evidence on various dimensions of perceived continuity and discontinuity of job histories. We use the West German part of the German Life History Study for a survival analysis of occupational mobility for cohorts born between 1929 and 1971. Here, using a new concept, we distinguish between direct mobility and indirect mobility which is defined as an occupational change that happens after an employment interruption. In addition, we analyze a new German cross-sectional data set from 2005 on retrospective career perceptions. We employ multinomial regression models to understand whether younger individuals report more unwanted occupational mobility and employment interruptions than older individuals. Our findings indicate that direct occupational mobility has neither increased across cohorts nor has it surged upward for the most recent cohorts, but that there has been an increase in indirect occupational mobility. Furthermore, while there is no higher incidence of unwanted occupational mobility in younger age groups, we find mixed evidence regarding the increased occurrence of unwanted career interruptions in younger age groups. Finally, the desire to experience occupational and firm changes has grown for younger age groups.

This article focuses on three countries with distinct policies toward motherhood and work: Germany, Sweden and the United States. We analyze the length of mothers' time out of paid work after childbirth and the short-term career consequences for mothers. In the United States, we identify a career punishment even for short timeout periods; long time-out periods increase the risk of a downward move and reduce the chances of an upward move. In Germany, long time-out periods destabilize the career and, the longer the leave, the greater the risk of either an upward or downward move. In Sweden, we find a negative effect of time out on upward moves. Hence, even in "woman-friendly" Sweden, women's career prospects are better if they return to paid work sooner rather than later.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag analysiert die Dynamik von Traditionalisierungsprozessen der häuslichen Arbeitsteilung im Eheverlauf westdeutscher Paare. Die Studie weist nach, dass vor allem Traditionalisierungsprozesse die Entwicklungsrichtung der häuslichen Arbeitsteilung dominieren. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, ob und inwieweit normenorientierte soziologische und ressourcenorientierte ökonomische Theorien geeignet sind, zu erklären, weshalb Männer in der Regel ihren relativen Beitrag an den weiblich konnotierten Haushaltstätigkeiten im Zeitverlauf verringern. Auf Basis einer Analyse von Längsschnittdaten des Bamberger Ehepaar-Panels zeigt sich, dass ökonomische Handlungstheorien vor allem wegen ihrer geschlechtssymmetrischen Vorhersagen die Dynamik arbeitsteiliger Traditionalisierungsprozesse nicht erklären können. Mit der These zur Veränderung normativer Bezugsrahmen für geschlechteregalitäre und -divergente Fairnessnormen werden Überlegungen angestellt, wie man die Veränderung der Arbeitsteilung im Haushaltskontext besser verstehen kann.

This study analyses labour market transitions of women in the time around first childbirth. Two employment decisions are considered: exiting the labour force and a reduction in work hours. We assess change in these transitions in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2008. We test whether policy changes, in particular the introduction of unpaid parental leave, have changed the opportunity costs of specific work‐family arrangements for women and their partners. We use detailed life-history couple data and estimate multinomial logit models. Our results show that over time, new mothers became less likely to exit the labour market and more likely to reduce their working hours. Eligibility for parental leave and public sector employment reduced the probability of exiting the labour market, but had no effect on reducing working hours. In the 1990s and for those eligible for parental leave, the likelihood that a working hour reduction was associated with a lower job level or an employer change decreased. New mothers with an occupational status at least as high as that of their male partner were less likely to reduce their labour supply. Policy changes did not alter the importance of partners’ relative occupational resources.

The article compares changes in West German and American women's mid-career job exits and re-entries and introduces an innovative event-history model to compare mobility across three decades using 1940s and 1950s birth cohorts from the German Life History Study and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. Processes by which transitions through parenthood and marriage impact women's labour market participation vary by country and cohort, evidence that changing gender relations, norms and institutions provide unique options and restrictions for women's family and career trajectories. Homemaking is in decline in both countries, but event-history models show that this decline is due to different life course dynamics in each country: women's job attachment has increased throughout the family cycle in the US, while German women still exit the labour market, but at motherhood rather than marriage, and for shorter durations. Employment interruptions have become more penalizing for women in both countries.

Gender and family researchers are often puzzled by the differences between gender norms and actual behaviour. For example, many previous studies have shown that since the 1970s, attitudes have changed toward more modern gender role beliefs. However, this is generally not reflected in behaviour, this being especially true for men’s involvement in housework and care work. In this paper, we analyse to what extent gender norms correspond with men’s participation in housework. We examine in particular cooking, vacuum-cleaning and doing the laundry, because these activities reflect pronounced variation in norms and actions with regard to modern and traditional gender role attitudes. Going beyond previous research, which assesses the general influence of norms on practices, we investigate the relative impact of different types of gender ideologies, namely the strength with which respondents endorse (1) the male provider and female homemaker model, (2) women’s employment, (3) employment as men’s primary role, and (4) men’s participation in unpaid work. Our empirical findings indicate that positive attitudes towards male contributions to housework are a key predictor of men’s housework.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on two welfare state regimes with differing degrees of de‐familialisation strategies, Germany and Sweden, to study whether and how women's career interruptions influence their labour market prospects. By comparing women with continuous careers to those with discontinuous careers due to: parental leave or homemaking; unemployment; or other reasons, the authors explore the support for the skill depreciation hypothesis and signalling theory. Depending on the type of welfare state regime, the authors expect women to be subject to varying degrees of career punishment for time spent out of the labour market.Design/methodology/approachCox proportional hazard regression models of the transition rate of an upward or downward occupational move among women in the labour market were estimated.FindingsFocusing on upward career moves, the results show no significant relationship between a career interruption and upward occupational moves in Germany. In Sweden, the longer the accumulated duration of family leave, the lower the transition rate to an upward move. Overall occupational mobility is higher in Sweden, and in a policy regime where almost all women work, extended leaves may have a more negative effect on career prospects than in Germany, where many mothers drop out of the labour force altogether. In Germany, on the other hand, the authors find traces of unemployment to be scarring, as the risk of downward moves increases with increased unemployment experience.Originality/valueThe paper explores the impact of policies in shaping women's career trajectories and critically examines the often‐cited skill depreciation hypothesis.

Despite of European family policies that focus on the reconciliation of work and care, a traditionalisation of parenting roles continues to occur after the transition to parenthood. This paper contains a literature study of institutional changes in European welfare states and of the professional field of health care. What stands out is that previous studies neglect the relationship between national family pol¬ icy and the role of family professionals. We suggest however that professionals in prenatal and postnatal care are able to influence whether family policy works and how. This will be illustrated with expert interviews and observations in The Netherlands, where most mothers work part time and fathers full time. The Dutch professionals appear to utilize an ideal of shared parenting, however at crucial moments they mostly hold mothers responsible for the child’s interest. In this sense, professionals contribute to the reproduction of traditional parenting roles.

Organizational ecology models of market dynamics emphasize the competition-inducing role of inter-organizational niche overlap--targeting similar market niches increases competitive pressure and thus reduces organizations' fitness. Recent studies, however, have suggested that moderate niche overlap may positively influence organizational viability by enhancing comparability and promoting legitimacy spillovers. Data on consumers' impressions of Dutch music festivals and on the growth and decline of early Internet search engines were used to test the proposition that niche overlap may, in fact, be non-monotonically related to organizational fitness. Since new organizations must first gain recognition by being comparable to others, they will benefit more from niche overlap than older incumbents. The results confirm that both the appeal that organizations generate as well as their growth rates are non-monotonically related to niche overlap, and that positive effects of niche overlap decrease with organizational age. Copyright 2012 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.