Women and part‐time work in Europe

• Author: Frédéric SALLADARRÉ,Stéphane HLAIMI
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00205.x
• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Date: 01 June 2014

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

Copyright © The authors 2014

Journal compilation and translation © International Labour Organization 2014

Women and part-time work in Europe

Frédéric SALLADARRÉ* and Stéphane HLAIMI**

Abstract. This article examines female part-time employment in 23 European

countries, distinguishing between “short” and “long” part-time employment. The

short form, dened as less than 20 hours per week, is associated with the young-

est and oldest age groups, slight disability, a higher number of children, lower

skill levels, and employment in community, social and personal services. Although

the incidence of part-time employment varies considerably across countries,

long part-time employment is generally more widespread than short part-time

employment, albeit with matching cross-country variations in the incidence of

the two types. This suggests that they are complementary, rather than substitutes

for one another.

In most European countries, the share of part-time employment has been

growing for several decades.1 On average, it increased from about 13 per

cent of total employment in 1985 to nearly 17 per cent in 2011 (OECD, 2012).

Despite wide variations in its incidence across countries, part-time employment

appears to have been the main source of job creation since the early 1990s

(Garibaldi and Mauro, 2002).

Part-time employment can be a means of promoting labour market ex-

ibility (Bollé, 1997). The adjustment variable is then working time. On the one

hand, it can help employers to introduce new forms of work organization and

respond to market demands, say, by lengthening the span of opening or oper-

ating hours (Corral and Isusi, 2004). On the other hand, part-time employ-

ment can help workers re-enter – or progressively exit – the labour market in

times of high unemployment (O’Reilly and Bothfeld, 2002). Lastly, it can also

make it easier for them to reconcile paid employment and family responsibil-

ities (Laurijssen and Glorieux, 2012).

* IUT-University of Rennes 1, CREM-CNRS, LEMNA, Rennes, France, email: frederic.

salladarre@univ-rennes1.fr. **

School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, email: hlaimi@

gmail.com. The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers who commented on the ori-

ginal draft of this article and Patrick Bollé for his helpful contribution to its nalization.

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

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

1 This article uses the OECD’s (2012) denition of part-time employment, i.e. less than

30 hours per week.

International Labour Review294

The characteristics and determinants of part-time employment have been

investigated in numerous studies, based on a variety of approaches.2 Part-time

workers are predominantly women, who accounted for some 80 per cent of

such employment in Europe in 2011 (OECD, 2012); they are also comparatively

young and typically concentrated in service industries with conditions of em-

ployment and work organization that differ from those typical of full-time em-

ployment. With the exception of Blank’s (1990) ndings on the United States,

the hourly pay of workers in part-time employment is consistently found to be

lower than that of their full-time counterparts.3 Indeed, part-time workers typi-

cally enjoy less favourable conditions of employment, not only in regard to pay,

but also in terms of training opportunities and career prospects, especially for

promotion to senior positions (OECD, 2010; Anxo et al., 2007).4 Part-time em-

ployment can also translate into reduced social protection entitlements in re-

gard to unemployment, pension, health-care and family benets. Even when they

enjoy employment stability, part-time workers covered by contributory social

protection systems contribute less on account of their shorter hours and may

therefore have to depend on benets provided under social assistance schemes

(Vielle and Walthery, 2003). Some studies have also investigated whether part-

time employment acts as a stepping stone to full-time employment, but they gen-

erally nd that few part-time workers actually transit to full-time employment.5

Although part-time workers make up a heterogeneous category, a broad

distinction has been drawn between voluntary and involuntary part-time em-

ployment. Workers who voluntarily choose part-time employment tend to

enjoy better terms of employment and working conditions than those who

work part-time for want of alternative employment.6 Yet this distinction suf-

fers from several limitations. First, differences in country-level denitions of

voluntary versus involuntary part-time employment tend to limit its value for

international comparative analysis (OECD, 2010).7 Moreover, a worker’s clas-

2 See, for example, OECD (2010 and 2012), Buddelmeyer, Mourre and Ward (2008) and

Jaumotte (2003), on the OECD countries; Anxo et al. (2007 ), on 21 European countries; Biel-

inski, Bosch and Wagner (20 02), on 16 European countries; Rosenfeld and Birkelund (1995), on

nine OECD countries; Benoit-Guilbot and Clémençon (2001), on nine European countries; Yerkes

and Visser (2006), on the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany; Booth and Van Ours

(2010), on the Netherlands; Kjeldstad and Nymoen (2012), on Norway; Fagan (2001), and Con-

nolly and Gregory (2008), on the United Kingdom; Bourreau-Dubois, Guillot and Jankeliowitch-

Laval (2001), on France.

3 See, for example, Wolf (20 02), on Germany; Hu and Tijdens (2003), on the Netherlands;

Manning and Petrongolo (2008) and Connolly and Gregory (200 8), on the United Kingdom; and

Bardasi and Gornick (2008), on the OECD countries.

4 Part-time workers are also less likely to have an open-ended contract of employment than

are full-time workers (OECD, 2010).

5 See, for example, OECD (2010), on the OECD countries; Blank (1990), on the United

States; O’Reilly and Bothfeld (2002), on the United Kingdom and Germany.

6 See OECD (2 010), on the OECD countries; Galtier (1999), on France; Kjeldstad and Ny-

moen (2012), on Norway; Fagan (20 01), on the United Kingdom; Stratton (1996), on the United

States; and Gash (2008), on France, Denmark and the United Kingdom.

7

For further elaboration, see “Some caveats on the denition of ‘voluntary’ part-time work”

in OECD (2010, p. 216, box 4.1).