Women's Preferences or Delineated Policies?
reflected in these preferences; very short working hours remain unpopular in the UK and longer
hours are preferred by nearly one in five part-time workers (Fagan, 2000). In households where
aggregate working hours are long, women do have a preference for shorter hours though. The
development of part-time work in the UK was not driven by women’s preferences and their current
preferences reflect the problem of undesirable hours in part-time work, creating serious obstacles
to “decent” part-time work. This is in contrast to the Netherlands, where part-time work is more
the outcome of what women want - admittedly conditioned by various constraints, but nonetheless
much less under direct influence of employers’ need for flexibility. As is argued by Berg and
colleagues (2003), in countries with little labour market regulation and low coverage of collective
bargaining, as is the case in the UK (and the US), employers have more power to shape when and
how long people work, and employee autonomy is usually very low. This is, in the case of the UK,
also reflected in higher levels of conflict and stress over work-family issues among both men and
women, compared to Germany and, especially, the Netherlands (according to ISSP data of 2002).
Fagan (2004) concurs that it is - apart from the length of working hours - the control of workers
over their individual working hours that is crucial.
ROLE OF GOVERNMENT POLICY
This situation of extreme working hours in the UK stems partly from the laissez-faire government
policies present until the Blair administration. In contrast to Germany and the Netherlands, there
was no explicit government policy concerning long working hours or promoting part-time work.
Relevant EU legislation did not apply before 1997 and when it did, after the change in government,
legislation was applied in a minimalistic way. The expansion of part-time employment that did take
place was market-driven and hardly constrained by legal norms (Fagan, 2000; Rubery and Fagan,
2000). Many part-time jobs were marginal, without employment protection, and based on very short
weekly hours (less than 16). While countries sometimes promote part-time work or reduced
working hours to combat unemployment, this was not the case in the UK. The British government
maintained a policy of allowing firms to choose their own working time arrangements, both very
long and very short hours.
Since the Blair government took office in 1997, several changes to labour regulations have been
made, including the introduction of a minimum wage in 1999, changes to maternity leave and the
introduction of paternity leave arrangements in 2002, and, similar to Germany, a new effort has
been launched to help employees reconcile work and family life (EIRO, 2003d). In 2000, the
government started a new campaign on the reconciliation of work and family life, asking employers
to consider more family-friendly policies. This campaign culminated in the new Employment Act of
2002, which included the changes to maternity pay and maternity leave as well as introduced a
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AIAS - UvA