WP 1 - The first part-time economy in the world. Does it work?

The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?

is now being recognised as an obstacle to economic growth by the Central Planning Office,
which recently has made the case for more public provision of day-care facilities (CPB
1998).

The absence of day-care facilities and a communal or public infrastructure for family-
orientated services in the Netherlands has made part-time work the dominant coping
strategy for women. This has shaped women’s preferences towards a middle position
between work and home. A majority of Dutch women does indeed seem to fit the category
of ‘adaptives’ (Hakim 1998) or ‘drifters’ (Hakim 1991), women that struggle to combine
different life interests and are unprepared to sacrifice one for the other.

In the Netherlands one of every six males in employment works part-time, which again is
higher than in all other industrial countries (see Table 2). Plantenga (1996) remains
unimpressed and shows that part-time work plays a rather different role in the career of men
and women. For men, part-time work tends to remain an incidental and temporary
phenomenon. It plays a large role, in particular, among young people. For instance, in 1994
45% of the active male population in the 15-19 age group and 16% of those in the 20-24 age
group worked part-time. These groups include students who pick up all kinds of jobs (from
mail delivery to working as chauffeurs or waiters), especially since student loans and grants
allow only a very tight budget. At later age, part-time work among males hardly exists,
except for the group over 55, 7-8% of whom work part-time (presumably in combination
with early retirement or a partial disablement allowance).

However, some negotiation in professional and better paid double earning families with
young children may result in more males shifting to four day working weeks. Our own
research in 1990 and a recent survey by the Organisation for Strategic Labour Market
Research (Kersten, Saris, van Rij and Visser 1990; OSA 1997) show the possible impact of
such intra-household bargaining (see Table 5).

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