Women's part‐time jobs: “Flexirisky” employment in five European countries

• Date: 01 June 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00204.x
• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Maite BLÁZQUEZ CUESTA,Julián MORAL CARCEDO

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

Copyright © The authors 2014

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2014

Women’s part-time jobs:

“Flexirisky” employment in ve

European countries

Maite BLÁZQUEZ CUESTA* and Julián MORAL CARCEDO*

Abstract. European countries currently have segmented labour markets with ex-

ible but insecure – “exirisky” – jobs, resulting in signicant inequality between

different categories of workers. Part-time jobs are one example: their exibility may

help workers reconcile work and family life, and increase women’s labour force

participation, but part-time employment can also result in new forms of inequal-

ity, thereby undermining EU equal opportunity policies. Empirically analysing

labour market transitions in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain,

this article shows part-timers – who are mostly women – to be at higher risk of

unemployment. It calls for strengthening equality between part-time and full-time

workers in terms of employment stability.

In recent years, the issue of labour market exibility has been at the fore of

the labour market policy debate in Europe. The lack of labour market ex-

ibility has been frequently blamed for the high unemployment rates experi-

enced by many EU countries in the last few decades. Against this background,

atypical employment – such as part-time work – has featured strongly in at-

tempts to increase labour market exibility, one of the key elements of the

employment component of the Europe 2020 growth strategy.

At the macro level, it has been argued that exibility has benecial ef-

fects on employment, output and prices, making economies less prone to in-

ation and improving prospects for job creation. At the micro level, increased

exibility through part-time work has been generally perceived as a positive

development, since it can be effective in meeting the needs of both employ-

ers and employees. It provides employers with a sufcient degree of exibility

in order to better adapt – in terms of both employment and wage costs –

to changes in market demand, and helps workers achieve a better balance

* Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, emails: maite.blazquez@uam.es; julian.moral@uam.

es. Maite Blázquez expresses her thanks for the nancial support provided by Fundación Ramón

Areces (Research project: Determinants of social exclusion and recommendations for combating it).

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

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

International Labour Review270

between work and family life. It can also make it easier for workers to enter,

or retire from, the labour market in a gradual fashion.

Over the last 25 years, part-time work has seen rapid growth in OECD

countries (O’Reilly and Fagan, 1998; Eurofound, 2011), and has served as a

means of reconciling work and family life, thereby increasing women’s par-

ticipation in the labour market. However, this dramatic increase in part-time

work has also been criticized. In particular, part-time workers are very often

at a disadvantage compared to full-time workers. Although action has been

taken at European level to protect part-time workers from discrimination in

employment and occupation (Directive 97/81/EC), a number of studies have

highlighted striking differences between part-time and full-time workers.

1

Typ-

ically, part-time workers earn lower wages, are less well protected, receive fewer

fringe benets, and have more limited career prospects. The relative concen-

tration of women in part-time work, especially as a form of de facto paren-

tal leave, has made this a major issue in gender equality. In order to ensure

equality between part-time and full-time workers, and achieve gender neutral-

ity, those workers who combine part-time work with childcare responsibilities

must not be adversely affected in terms of their career prospects.

In light of the policy relevance, and the growing concern of academics,

politicians and practitioners about this issue, this article aims to contribute

to the existing literature by examining another source of “part-time penalty”

not yet explored: the higher risk of job loss or non-employment for part-time

workers (the term “non-employment” is used in this article to cover both une-

mployment and inactivity). To that end, we follow Del Boca and Sauer (2009)

and formulate a general dynamic utility maximization model of female labour

supply characterized by persistence in labour force participation. However, un-

like Del Boca and Sauer, the source of persistence in our model comes from

the effects of past employment decisions on future employment stability. Basi-

cally, past decisions on working hours act as an indicator of work involvement

(Akerlof, 1976) and motivation that makes workers more (or less) valuable to

a rm, thus affecting their future career path. We also analyse the differences

in employment stability across countries, and the extent to which this might

serve as an alternative explanation for the cross-country differences observed

in the incidence of part-time work. For this purpose, we use longitudinal data

extracted from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP, 1995–

2001) to model women’s employment transitions in Denmark, France, Italy,

Spain and the Netherlands. The econometric approach is based on rst-order

Markov models of labour market transitions that allow us to control for en-

dogeneity of initial labour market status.

The article is organized as follows. The rst section provides an overview

of the literature as well as the recent trends in – and the gender component

1

Ermisch and Wright (1993); Waldfogel (1997); Dekker, Muffels and Stancanelli (2000); Wolf

(2002); Hu and Tijdens (2003); Hardoy and Schøne (2006); Rodgers (200 4); Jepsen et al. (2005);

Connolly and Gregory (2008a and 20 08b); Manning and Petrongolo (2008); McDonald, Bradley and

Brown (2009); Lyonette, Baldauf and Behle (2010); Fernández-Kranz and Rodríguez-Planas (2011).