Part-time Work - A Trap for Women`s Careers? An Analysis of the Roles of Heterogeneity and State Dependence

Mary Gregory (), Sara Connolly, School of Economics and Social Studies and University of East Anglia

No 245, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Part-time work has been a major area of employment growth for women in the UK over recent decades. Almost half the women in employment now work part-time and two-thirds have worked part-time for some part of their working lives. Part-time employment is welcomed by many women as a means of maintaining labour market participation particularly during the childcare years. However many part-time jobs are low paid and offer little opportunity for career advancement. This leads to conflicting views of the role of part-time work: allowing a full-time career to be maintained or as a dead-end trap for women`s careers. This paper examines this issue using cohort data which follows women`s labour market involvement up to age 42. The pathways followed through full-time employment, part-time employment and non-employment are found to be complex and highly varied. Using several estimation methods (pooled multinomial logits, dynamic random effects binary choice logits and selection-corrected random effects probits) on a 20-year panel we examine the relative roles of heterogeneity in characteristics and state dependence in explaining the choice of labour market state. Our major finding is that a woman`s labour market history reveals itself as the major determinant of subsequent labour market state, dominating the role of characteristics. Part-time work serves two different functions. Women whose past history involves full-time work even in conjunction with spells of part-time work or non-employment, revert to full-time work. Women whose labour market history combines spells in part-time work with non-employment are unlikely subsequently to take up full-time work.

Keywords: Female Employment; Part-time Work; Persistence; Life-cycle; Dynamic Panel; Discrete Choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 C33 C35 J16 J22 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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