Women's Preferences or Delineated Policies?
Concerns abound regarding the proliferation of part-time work as well as care and leave
arrangements within individual welfare states, which have more recently culminated in a body of
research regarding women’s ability to combine paid and domestic work (See Ackers, 2003;
Crompton, 2002; Drew et al., 1998; Fagan, 2004; Hakim, 2000; Hantrais, 2000; Higgins et al., 2000;
Kay, 2003; Kirby, 2003; O’Reilly and Fagan, 1998).
Women’s participation in paid work varies across Europe. The Scandinavian countries are well
known for high levels of female labour market participation, while Southern European countries are
often noted for having lower participation rates, with Continental European countries exhibiting a
female labour market participation rate generally near the European average. However, female
labour force participation rates are only one part of the comparative puzzle. Levels of full-time and
part-time work vary greatly across Europe, as do policies maintained by the various welfare states
that affect women’s working patterns. While most European countries are moving away from the
classical male breadwinner model in the last decades, remnants of these policies are still visible and
continue to shape women’s employment patterns and women’s preferences and choices in
combining paid and unpaid work.
It is with an eye on these employment patterns and preferences that we consider the dominant one-
and-a-half earner model in the Netherlands. Is this model, as evident in the Netherlands, an example
of decent work as understood by the ILO? Can it be a model for countries in which women have
long remained outside the market for paid work (Visser, 2002)? With rising concerns about work
intensity and pressures that make reconciling work and family aspirations difficult (OECD, 2001),
can part-time employment offer a solution? What prevents the marginalisation of part-time work? In
this paper we show that mothers in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK often prefer part-time
work as a way of combining paid and unpaid work. Yet, unlike the Netherlands, no general female
preference for part-time work developed. Furthermore, levels of marginal work, associated with
short working hours and flexible employment contracts lacking basic rights and entitlements, are
higher, especially in the UK. In both the UK and Germany, part-time employment is more often an
involuntary choice. Based on the Gender Role Modules in the ISSP1 2002, we observe that men and
women in the UK experience much higher levels of work-family conflict and stress than in the
Netherlands, which in international rankings scores the lowest stress levels. Germany takes a middle
position. A plausible explanation for the high stress levels evident in the UK is that these are related
to the rising number of people working very long or very short hours, and to the relative lack of
control over working time. The low levels of regulation in the UK, even after the application of
relevant EU law by the Blair governments, though often at the lowest possible level and with
1 International Social Survey Programme.
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