Part-Time Jobs: What Women Want?

Alison Booth and Jan van Ours

No 4686, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Part-time jobs are popular among partnered women in many countries. In the Netherlands the majority of partnered working women have a part-time job. Our paper investigates, from a supply-side perspective, if the current situation of abundant part-time work in the Netherlands is likely to be a transitional phase that will culminate in many women working full-time. We analyze the relationship between part-time work and life satisfaction, and between job satisfaction and preferred working hours using panel data on life and job satisfaction for a sample of partnered women and men. We also utilize time-use data to consider the distribution within the household of market work and housework, and discuss the work specialization hypothesis in this context. Our main results indicate that partnered women in part-time work have high levels of job satisfaction, a low desire to change their working hours, and live in partnerships in which household production is highly gendered. Taken together, our results suggest that part-time jobs are what most Dutch women want.

Keywords: satisfaction; part-time work; working hours; happiness; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2010-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2013, 26 (1), 263-283

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Related works:
Journal Article: Part-time jobs: what women want? (2013)
Working Paper: Part-Time Jobs: What Women Want? (2010)
Working Paper: Part-time Jobs: What Women Want? (2010)
Working Paper: Part-time Jobs: What Women Want? (2010)
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