Gender equality, part‐time work and segregation in Europe

• Date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Theo SPARREBOOM
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00203.x
• Published date: 01 June 2014

International Labour Review, Vol. 153 (2014), No. 2

Copyright © International Labour Organization 2014

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2014

Gender equality, part-time work

and segregation in Europe

Theo SPARREBOOM*

Abstract. This article shows how both segregation by sex and segregation by hours

shape the occupational space of part-time workers. The level of segregation by sex

varies according to the shares of full-time and part-time work in total employment,

and the trade-off between increasing the volume of female employment and de-

creasing segregation by sex is much stronger for full-time work. The author argues

that there is less segregation by sex in part-time work than in full-time work; it is

the gap between the volume of male and female part-time employment that deter-

mines the effect of part-time work on segregation in total employment.

An ambiguous relationship exists between gender equality and part-time

work. On the one hand, part-time work has allowed many women to

enter the labour market who may not have worked at all if only full-time jobs

were available. On the other hand, part-time work is often of lesser quality

than full-time work, in terms of both pay and other aspects (OECD, 2010).

While the growth in women’s part-time work tends to increase the volume of

female employment, it does not necessarily reduce the gap between the volume

of male and the volume of female employment (Sparreboom, 2012). Part-time

work is often seen as a manifestation of the pressure on women to accommo-

date care and reconcile work and family life (Orloff, 2002), and the growth

of part-time work is less dependent on policies such as the provision of child

care to facilitate full-time work by women (OECD, 2010; Sparreboom, 2012).

However, part-time work comes at a cost in terms of inequality not only of

hours worked but also employment quality.

Occupational segregation by sex is an important and enduring aspect

of labour markets around the world, and is an important factor in women’s

* Statistics Department, International Labour Ofce, email: sparreboom@ilo.org. Research

assistance was provided by Derk van Wijk and Pinar Hosafci; the article beneted from comments

on a presentation of preliminary results at the policy seminar “How normal is part-time work in

the Netherlands”, Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), The Hague, 26 April

2012; from comments on the presentation of the article at the 73rd Decent Work Forum, February

2013, ILO, Geneva; and from comments provided by an anonymous referee.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

International Labour Review246

disadvantaged economic situation compared to men (Anker, 1998). Occupa-

tional segregation by sex restricts options and choices for women, and affects

the valuation and remuneration of work. It accounts for a signicant part of

the observed wage gap between men and women, partly because the relative

importance of gender differences in human capital is diminishing (Ñopo, Daza

and Ramos, 2011; World Bank, 2011). Segregation also has negative economic

effects, since it hampers the efcient allocation of labour, thereby reducing

the labour market’s ability to respond to change. Excluding part of the labour

market from access to occupations reduces the pool of talent, and it is almost

inevitable that labour and skill shortages take longer to be resolved in strongly

sex-typed occupations (Bettio and Verashchagina, 2009).

While occupational segregation by sex and part-time employment are

often considered separately in the literature, this article attempts a joint ana-

lysis, allowing us to examine the interplay between segregation by sex and

segregation between part-time and full-time employment. Revisiting the de-

bate on the trade-off between increasing the volume of female employment

and decreasing segregation by sex in Europe (Rubery and Fagan, 1993; Bettio

and Verashchagina, 2009), the article demonstrates that cross-country results

change markedly if part-time work is taken into account. A new measure of

segregation between part-time and full-time work – i.e. segregation by hours

of work – is used to complement traditional measures of segregation by sex,

providing valuable additional insights.

The data used are from the European Social Survey (ESS), a biennial

survey based on questions including those relating to the respondent’s em-

ployment situation. Data from the ESS are publicly available,1 but the sample

sizes in individual countries are relatively small. For this reason, we combine

the samples from the rst ve biennial rounds of the ESS (2002, 200 4, 2006,

2008, 2010), thus covering the period 2002–11 for 25 developed economies,

including all countries of the European Union (EU) except Malta, Latvia,

Lithuania and Romania, which were not covered by the ESS, plus Norway and

Switzerland.

2

Therefore, the indicators presented in this paper are average val-

ues for the period 2002 –11, based on ve rounds of the ESS for 15 countries

for which data are available for all years, with averages based on available sur-

veys/years for the remaining countries.3 In line with van Bastelaer, Lemaître

and Marianna (1997), a cut-off of 30 hours has been adopted to dene part-

time work in this article.

1 See http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/.

2 The sample size for the employed population is 96 ,000 observations across all countries,

ranging from 1,000 to 7,000 per country.

3 Austria (Round 1–3), Belgium (1–5), Bulgaria (3–5), Cyprus (3 and 4), Czech Republic

(1, 2, 4 and 5), Denmark (1–5), Estonia (2–5), Finland (1–5), France (1–5), Germany (1–5), Greece

(1, 2 and 4), Hungary (1–5), Ireland (1–4), Italy (1 and 2), Luxembourg (1 and 2), Netherlands (1–5),

Norway (1–5), Poland (1–5), Portugal (1–5), Slovakia (2–4), Slovenia (1–5), Spain (1–5), Sweden

(1–5), Switzerland (1–5), United Kingdom (1–5).