Moving Down: Women’s Part-time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991–2001

Sara Connolly () and Mary Gregory ()
Additional contact information
Sara Connolly: University of East Anglia

No 3106, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The UK’s Equal Opportunities Commission has recently drawn attention to the ‘hidden brain drain’ when women working part-time are employed in occupations below those for which they are qualified. These inferences were based on self-reporting. We give an objective and quantitative analysis of the nature of occupational change as women make the transition between full-time and part-time work. We construct an occupational classification which supports a ranking of occupations based on the average level of qualification of those employed there on a full-time basis. Using the NESPD and the BHPS for the period 1991-2001 we show that perhaps one-quarter of women moving from full- to part-time work move to an occupation at a lower level of qualification. Over 20 percent of professional women downgrade, half of them moving to low-skill jobs; two-thirds of nurses leaving nursing become care assistants; women from managerial positions are particularly badly affected. Women remaining with their current employer are much less vulnerable to downgrading, and the availability of part-time opportunities within the occupation is far more important than the presence of a pre-school child in determining whether a woman moves to a lower-level occupation. These findings indicate a loss of economic efficiency through the underutilisation of the skills of many of the women who work part-time.

Keywords: female employment; part-time work; occupation; life-cycle; downgrade; over-qualification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 C33 C35 J16 J22 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2008, 118(526), F52-F76

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3106.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Moving Down: Women's Part-Time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991-2001 (2008)
Journal Article: Moving Down: Women's Part‐Time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991–2001 (2008)
Working Paper: Moving Down: Women`s Part-time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991-2001 (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3106

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().