Flexibility and security: an asymmetrical relationship?
Visser (2002) attributes the expansion of part-time work, particularly amongst married women
with children, also to particular institutional and normative changes, such as the changes of attitudes
towards work, motherhood and childrearing; the introduction of equal pay legislation; tax reform
that made female employment worthwhile; and the endorsement of work sharing policies by unions
as well as by employers. Part-time jobs have thus become the main entry point into paid employment
for young people and a transitional arrangement between domestic activities and employment, mostly
for women (Visser, 2005). The fact that only a minority of Dutch women prefer to work full time
54, especially during the childrearing years, has led to the “one-and-a-half-job-per-household” model,
unique in Europe (ibid.). Although part-time jobs are neither atypical nor flexible (81% of part-time
jobs are standard jobs on indefinite duration contracts, subject to full dismissal protection), they have
increased the aggregate flexibility of the Dutch economy (Visser, 2002). Other forms of flexible em-
ployment are also widespread: temporary agency work (quite common among first time job seekers),
fixed-term contracts, on-call work, flexi-time, new forms of self-employment (subcontracting), etc.
In Denmark, the EU country with the highest female participation rate, the only flexible form
of employment that is widely practiced and is above the EU-27 average is part-time work, which ac-
counts for 23.6% of total employment (still, only half the rate of the Netherlands). All other flexible
or atypical forms of employment are rather rare, indicating that the Danish employers enjoy a more
than satisfactory level of flexibility, not so much through flexible employment patterns, as through
very high levels of numerical flexibility and labour mobility, the result of low-cost and uncomplicated
hiring and firing procedures (backed by a generous state support system). As Bredgaard et al. (2005)
observe, 25%-30% of the Danish workforce change employers every year. 55 Additionally, the Danish
workforce is highly salaried (93.7%, as compared to just 59.3% in Greece) and thus subject to rights
and obligations.
54 The incidence of full time employment amongst women is the lowest in Europe, 18%, as compared to 45% in Den-
mark (Visser, 2002).
55 It is estimated that owing to this great labour mobility, between a third and a quarter of the workforce is affected by
— a usually short spell of- unemployment in a year (Bredgaard et al., 2005).
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