Women's Preferences or Delineated Policies?
Until the early 1990s, minimum wage legislation excluded those working in mini-jobs (under 15
hours per week) who were mostly women. The exclusion of part-time employees, again mostly
women, from pension funds, became illegal in 1994. Various smaller discriminations, existing in
collective agreements, were successively removed in the 1990s.
In the 1990s, part-time jobs have become common. Part-time jobs exist in two out of three firms
with ten or more employees (StAr, 1997) and they can now be found in all sectors of the economy,
in all occupations, even at managerial level (CBS-statline). However, small part-time jobs remain an
issue in retail, hotel and catering, in cleaning, nursing and teaching, and in personal services (in the
latter branch, there would also seem to be an issue of informal and undeclared work). In the 1990s,
the Dutch labour market combined a high incidence of part-time work with a comparatively small
divergence in occupational profiles between full-timers and part-timers (Fagan et al., 2000), which can
be taken as one indicator of “acceptance” and “normalisation” of part-time work. As noted in the
introduction, levels of involuntary part-time work are low in the Netherlands, and part-time jobs
are, on the whole, not marginal, meaning that they are covered by the same rights and entitlements
as full-time workers. Legislation regarding the equal treatment of part-time workers became
effective in 1996 (Wet Gelijke Behandeling), and the quality of part-time jobs in the Netherlands is
comparatively high. Furthermore, the Working Hours Adjustment Act of 2000 (Wet Aanpassing
Arbeidsduur) guarantees individual workers the right to request either an increase or decrease in
their working hours. The reversibility of lengthening or shortening the individual workweek is a step
towards part-time work as decent work. Yet part-time work is not gender neutral in the
Netherlands, and despite policy efforts to increase men’s participation in caring and household tasks
(SZW, 2002), women are still more likely to perform caring and domestic duties. Also, part-time
work does carry disadvantages - some in earnings (especially in the private sector and mostly in
fringe benefits), more in lower participation in job training, and also in careers. And only the very
long hours part-time jobs or those with higher earnings would seem to guarantee individual
subsistence, outside a household with additional income from earnings, benefits or rents. Yet, panel
data suggests that even among younger generations, mothers who have chosen to work part-time
when raising young children do not return to working full-time when their children grow older. It is
also relevant to note that the persistence of the part-time pattern continued when unemployment
rates among women dropped significantly in recent years. All this points to part-time work as a
choice above full-time work, in spite of some significant disadvantages but with the advantage of
more disposable time for rest, care, education, travel or leisure. It goes without saying that such
choices are made under constraints, such as individual and household earnings, the decisions and
preferences of partners, a particular gendered division of household tasks, and job opportunities.
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AIAS - UvA