Originally published here.

Across OECD countries there are big differences in the share of part-timework in employment among prime age female workers. In 2007, the femalepart-time share of women workers aged between 25 and 54 years ranged froma high of 60% in Switzerland and 54% in the Netherlands, to a low of 9%in Greece. An interesting question is whether or not the current situationof plentiful part-time work in some countries is likely to be an intermediatestage en route to a greater proportion of women in full-time jobs.

There are two opposing views on the efficiency implications of so manywomen working part-time. The negative view is that part-time jobs implywastage of resources and under-utilization of investments in human capital,since many part-time working women are highly educated.

The positiveview is that, without the existence of part-time jobs, female labor force par-ticipation would be substantially lower since women, confronted with thechoice between a full-time job and zero working hours, would opt for thelatter.Against this background, the purpose of our paper is to investigate, froma supply-side perspective, if the current situation of abundant part-time workin the Netherlands is likely to be a transitional phase culminating in manywomen working in full-time jobs.

Our econometric analysis, using panel dataon life and job satisfaction of a sample of partnered women and men, assumesthat dissatisfaction with a particular work status is likely to lead to changes inworking hours in the future. In addition, we utilize time-use data to considerthe distribution of market work and housework within the household. We alsodiscuss the work specialization hypothesis in this context.

If the Netherlandsis characterized by little gender-stereotyping about working roles, we wouldexpect to see that, on average in our sample of partnered households, themale share of domestic work is increasing in the female partner’s share of market work. If this is not the case, it suggests that there is a gendereddivision of household and market labor within the family unit.Our approach differs from that in earlier studies that investigate whetheror not part-time work represents a stepping stone between nonwork and full- time employment. For example, Blank (1989) used US data from the PanelStudy of Income Dynamics to explore transitions between the states of full-time, part-time or nonwork over the period 1976-1984 for a sample of womenaged 18 to 60 in 1976 who were either household heads or spouses.

Blankfound that three out of four women over the 9 years remained predominantlyin that state and that very few women use part-time work as a steppingstone from nonwork to full-time work. In Sweden, Sundstr¨om (1991) showsthat part-time work has not marginalized women but instead has increasedthe continuity of their labor force attachment, strengthened their positionin the labor market and reduced their economic dependency. Continuouspart-time employment has replaced work interruptions during child rearingyears. Moreover the growth in part-time work has not been followed byincreasing difficulties for women working part-time to shift to full-time work(Sundstr¨om, 1991). Thus the initial increase in part-time work in Swedenmight be viewed as a transitional phase leading to many Swedish womenworking full-time.

In the Netherlands, the number of part-time jobs has expanded rapidlyover the past decade, due to a gradual change in policy causing barriers forpart-time employment to be removed. Laws were implemented that madepart-time work more attractive. In 1993 the statutory exemption of jobsof less than one-third of the normal working week from application of thelegal minimum wage and related social security entitlements were abolished.Currently, most taxes are neutral and social security benefits are usuallypro rata.

In 1995 unions and employers signed the first proper collectiveagreement for temporary workers. In 2000 a right to part-time work lawwas introduced. Because government introduced legislation ensuring thatthe rights of part-time workers are properly protected, part-time work is notlimited to marginal jobs but is a feature of mainstream employment (Portegijsand Keuzenkamp, 2008). According to Portegijs et al. (2008), the part-time job in the Netherlands was born in the 1950s when, in response to shortages of young female staff, firms began to offer part-time jobs to married women.

Currently, about 40% of women with part-time jobs are mothers of youngchildren who work part-time because they either prefer this, or have no choicebut to provide childcare themselves.

However, almost half of the part-timeworking women are over 40 and no longer have young children. Many womenin “small” part-time jobs prefer to work longer while many women in “large”part-time jobs prefer to work shorter hours. A part-time job between 20 and27 hours a week would be women’s preferred choice (Portegijs et al., 2008).Apart from supply-side factors, changes in labor demand may have beenimportant too. Euwals and Hogerbrugge (2004) distinguish between dynamicflexibility – adjustment to the business cycle – and organizational flexibility – adjustment to non-standard working hours. They conclude that dynamicflexibility cannot explain the strong growth of part-time employment, but theneed for organizational flexibility, related to the shift from manufacturing toservices, might have contributed. Bosch et al (2008) analyze the growth of part-time work distinguishing between age, calender time and cohort effects.They find that the incidence of part-time work has increased over successivegenerations at the expense of full-time and small part-time jobs. As a result,the average working hours of working women remained stable over successivecohorts. Finally, Bosch and Van der Klaauw (2009), analyzing the effects of a 2001 tax reform which made work much more financially attractive forwomen with a high-income partner, find that women even slightly reducedtheir working hours in response to receiving a higher after-tax hourly wage.Previous studies are important in charting patterns of work mobility,which can be used as a basis for predicting future behavior using comparativestatic techniques. However we choose in the present paper to adopt the alter- native approach described above, in which we use couple’s (dis)satisfactionwith working hours and the division of responsibilities within the house-hold to make inferences about expected future working behavior of partneredwomen.The majority of part-time workers in the Netherlands are those withfamily responsibilities. Therefore we focus on partnered individuals in ourempirical analysis. Now that most women in the Netherlands work part-time,an important question is whether part-time jobs are indeed what womenwant. This paper investigates in detail whether indeed Dutch women wantpart-time jobs. The paper is set-up as follows. In the next section we brieflyreview previous studies looking at the relationship between part-time workand partnered life and job satisfaction. We also summarize the relevantinstitutional framework in the Netherlands and compare the extent of part-time work in the Netherlands with other OECD countries. Section 3 presentsa fixed effects empirical analysis of the relationship between part-time workand life satisfaction. Section 4 investigates job satisfaction and working hourspreferences, while Section 5 analyses time use from a household perspective.Section 6 concludes.As will be seen, our main results indicate that partnered women in part-time work in the Netherlands have high levels of job satisfaction, a low de-sire to change their working hours, and they live in partnerships in whichhousehold production is with highly gendered. Taken together, these resultssuggest that part-time work in the Netherlands is here to stay, at least in thenear future.

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