WP 36 - Women's Preferences or Delineated Policies? The development or part-time work in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom

Mara Yerkes & Jelle Visser

2. General Developments

Female labour force participation rates increased throughout the last decades across Europe and
there are a number of general explanations for this phenomenon. The introduction of the birth
control pill was a foremost factor, as well as changes to household size, a postponement of
motherhood, and a lessening of time spent on household chores. Economically, we also know that a
number of factors increased the cost of remaining at home, making it more attractive for women to
enter the labour market. Women’s continued participation in higher education, rising wages and
legislative changes in tax systems, employment protection and wage setting, meant to decrease or
rule out the discrimination many women faced in the labour market, served to entice women to
take part in paid labour. These developments were similar in the Netherlands, Germany and the
United Kingdom, although initial levels, the timing and nature of policies varied across countries, as
did the resulting increase in female labour market participation.

Female labour market participation was slow to increase in the Netherlands, and it was not until the
1980s that women entered paid labour in large numbers. This development began in the 1960s in
the UK and the 1970s in West Germany.² In 2003, women’s labour force participation rates are
higher than the EU-15 average of 61.3 per cent in all three case countries (see Figure 1). The UK has
the highest labour force participation of the three countries at 69.2, followed by the Netherlands at
68.4 and Germany with 64.5 per cent. In the Netherlands female participation rates increased with
16 percentage points since 1990, in Germany with 9 and in the UK with 2 points (OECD, 2004).

² As will be discussed in section 4.1, due to the full employment policy in communist East Germany, levels of female labour market
participation were much higher than in West Germany. Even following reunification, the labour market participation rates of East German
women remain higher than those of W est German women.

AIAS - UvA

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