This article is concerned with ethnic homogamy in Slovakia. The authors set out from the assumption that ethnic homogamy is an indicator of the degree of ethnic tolerance and multiculturalism in society. Greater ethnic homogamy indicates larger social distances between ethnic groups, and vice versa. The authors analyse data from the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. The data include all marriages between 1992 and 2012 in Slovakia categorised by the ethnicity of the spouses. The authors test hypotheses about the trends in both absolute and relative ethnic homogamy and find that marriages in Slovakia are strongly structured by ethnic homogamy. The probability of ethnically heterogamous marriage varies among ethnic groups; however, it does not increase for any of the ethnic groups over the period of analysis. Members of different ethnic groups have not grown socially closer and interethnic distances have not decreased due to marriage.
This article focuses on the latter approach, in particular on the occupational gender segregation in relation to the gender segregation in education. The theory of human capital suggests that the increasing level of qualification, talents and productive skills of women acquired in the educational system, training and experience at work, should have a positive impact on quality of women's position in the labour market and enhance gender equality. Given the increasing educational attainment of women over the past decades, one would assume that their position in the labour market, including the gender segregation in occupational categories, has improved as well. However, the results of current research prove that despite all the changes and progress made with respect to the level of education of women, the level of occupational segregation tends to remain relatively stable over time. Thus, the increasing level of education does not seem to have a very strong impact on the overall level of gender segregation in occupations. One of the possible explanations may be the fact that women and men tend to choose different fields of study which predetermine their participation in particular categories of occupational structure to a larger extent than their level of education. Men are still overrepresented in different fields of education than women and this tendency seems to persist even in the countries where a campaign has been led for the promotion of democratic and non-discriminatory practices in the system of education. The main aims of this article are: 1) to conduct a cross-national comparison of levels of occupational gender segregation and 2) to examine the relation between the level of occupational gender segregation and gender segregation in education (both vertical and horizontal). The analyses include 18 European countries covered by the European Social Survey (ESS) conducted in 2004.
The article focuses on the development of the labour market in the Czech Republic from the perspective of employment and unemployment between 1998 and 2004. Using data from the Czech Statistical Office, and within a reference framework of EU countries, the authors discuss and analyse the factors that determine unemployment and employment in Czech society. The authors use latent logistic regression to verify the assumption that the odds of unemployment are not evenly distributed across the entire Czech population and to identify three segments of the labour market in the Czech Republic. In each of these three segments the employment and unemployment odds differ, and the factors that determine these odds function differently in each segment.
The text is concerned with suicides in the Czech Republic. It seeks to determine which social variables, and to what extent, have affected suicidal behaviour since 1989. The authors draw on Durkheim’s theory that society prevents suicidal tendencies. They formulate six hypotheses to account for the effects of social variables (year, sex, age, education, and marital status) on suicide rates, which they test using data from 1995 to 2010. Their findings show that time weakens the odds for committing suicides. Regardless of the time, women and people who are young, more educated, and living in a marriage face the lowest risk of suicide. That marriage works as a shield against suicide is especially true for men (its protective function for women is significantly lower). In the period observed, there was a relative increase in the effect of two social variables: middle age (45–69 years) and lower education. The structure of variables explaining suicide rates changed during the time period observed.