Married Women in Part-Time Employment

ILR Review ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Long ◽  
Ethel B. Jones

This research deals with three aspects of the part-time employment pattern of working wives: (1) the wives' characteristics, (2) the level and structure of their earnings in part-time jobs, and (3) the duration of their employment when part-time jobs are available to them. This study improves upon previous research by using multivariate analysis to determine if the variation in the incidence of part-time work consistently found in other studies persists when earnings potential, fertility, family income, and other factors that may vary by age or race are held constant. It differs further by including a data source that contains direct measures of market wages and experience for a large sample of married working women. The authors find that husband's income, family size, and the wife's health, race, and previous work experience are among the variables that influence the probability that the wife works part time. They also find that the level of wages and returns to some investments in human capital are relatively lower in the part-time labor market but that there are similarities between the earnings structure of part-time and full-time jobs. They conclude that part-time work opportunities appear to increase the length of the working life of married women.

1990 ◽  
Vol 156 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. W. Brown ◽  
A. Bifulco

A prospective inquiry of a largely working-class sample of women with children considers the effect of employment on risk of developing clinical depression. The hypothesis was that there would be a direct protective effect arising from employment once quality of other support was taken into account. In fact full-time working mothers were at high risk. This appeared to be explained by either prior work strain or a severe event involving ‘deviant’ behaviour on the part of husband/boyfriend or child. Neither factor was relevant for part-time workers. The severe events appeared to be particularly depressogenic for full-time workers because they represented either failure in the motherhood role or a sense of entrapment in an unrewarding work/domestic situation. However, those in part-time work had a low rate of onset compared with non-workers, and the difference appears to be related to non-working women feeling less secure about their marriages.


Author(s):  
Heejung Chung

This chapter examines part-time working women's access to flexitime, that is the worker's control over their schedules such as starting and ending times, and time off work (a couple of hours during their working day) to tend to personal issues. It further examines whether this relative access varies across countries. The analysis of data from 30 European countries show that at the European average, part-time workers are more likely to get access to flexitime - showing evidence of a complimentary effect, and are as likely to get access to time off work for personal reasons as full time workers. There was a significant cross-national variance in part-time worker's relative access to flexitime compared to that of full-time workers. Countries where part-time work is more prevalent, where strong centralised unions exist, and family policies are generous were where women generally had better access to flexitime. However, this was especially the case for full-time working women, decreasing the gap between full-time and part-time working women


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 283-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Evans ◽  
Mark Richardson

Business leaders are becoming increasingly explicit regarding the skills, attributes and behaviours expected of graduate entrants. These skills are often developed through a combination of academic studies and work experience. While universities are increasingly providing opportunities for experiential learning, typically a placement year or internship, a growing number of students are undertaking self-initiated part-time work alongside their full-time degree studies. This part-time employment, typically in retail or hospitality, will help develop the skills, attributes and behaviours that employers demand. However, it is important that graduates are able to elucidate their learning to future employers during the graduate recruitment process. The purpose of this viewpoint article is to challenge full-time degree students who are working part-time to record (perhaps through a logbook) and reflect on their work experience so that they will be able to provide concrete examples to reinforce their skills and experience. The article concludes by discussing the role of universities in the process.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
David S. Pedulla ◽  
Michael J. Donnelly

Abstract The social and economic forces that shape attitudes toward the welfare state are of central concern to social scientists. Scholarship in this area has paid limited attention to how working part-time, the employment status of nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce, affects redistribution preferences. In this article, we theoretically develop and empirically test an argument about the ways that part-time work, and its relationship to gender, shape redistribution preferences. We articulate two gender-differentiated pathways—one material and one about threats to social status—through which part-time work and gender may jointly shape individuals’ preferences for redistribution. We test our argument using cross-sectional and panel data from the General Social Survey in the United States. We find that the positive relationship between part-time employment, compared to full-time employment, and redistribution preferences is stronger for men than for women. Indeed, we do not detect a relationship between part-time work and redistribution preferences among women. Our results provide support for a gendered relationship between part-time employment and redistribution preferences and demonstrate that both material and status-based mechanisms shape this association.


2012 ◽  
Vol 222 ◽  
pp. R20-R37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Dex ◽  
Erzsébet Bukodi

The effects of working part time on job downgrading and upgrading are examined over the life course of British women born in 1958. We use longitudinal data with complete work histories from a large-scale nationally representative cohort study. Occupations were ranked by their hourly average earnings. Analyses show a strong link between full-time/part-time transitions and downward and upward occupational mobility over the course of up to thirty years of employment. Probabilities of occupational mobility were affected by women's personal traits, occupational characteristics and demand-side factors. Downward mobility on moving from full-time to part-time work was more likely for women at the top levels of the occupational hierarchy working in male-dominated or mixed occupations and less likely in higher occupations with more part-time jobs available.


SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401774269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariska van der Horst ◽  
David Lain ◽  
Sarah Vickerstaff ◽  
Charlotte Clark ◽  
Ben Baumberg Geiger

In the context of population aging, the U.K. government is encouraging people to work longer and delay retirement, and it is claimed that many people now make “gradual” transitions from full-time to part-time work to retirement. Part-time employment in older age may, however, be largely due to women working part-time before older age, as per a U.K. “modified male breadwinner” model. This article therefore separately examines the extent to which men and women make transitions into part-time work in older age, and whether such transitions are influenced by marital status. Following older men and women over a 10-year period using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this article presents sequence, cluster, and multinomial logistic regression analyses. Little evidence is found for people moving into part-time work in older age. Typically, women did not work at all or they worked part-time (with some remaining in part-time work and some retiring/exiting from this activity). Consistent with a “modified male breadwinner” logic, marriage was positively related to the likelihood of women belonging to typically “female employment pathway clusters,” which mostly consist of part-time work or not being employed. Men were mostly working full-time regardless of marital status. Attempts to extend working lives among older women are therefore likely to be complicated by the influence of traditional gender roles on employment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
David S. Pedulla

This chapter delves into the effects of each type of employment experience—part-time work, temporary agency employment, skills underutilization, and long-term unemployment. These are compared to full-time, standard employment on applicants' likelihood of receiving a callback for a job. As the chapter shows, the effects are largely contingent. First, they are contingent on the type of employment history. Each type of employment experience—part-time work versus temporary agency employment, for instance—does not result in the same treatment from hiring professionals. Second, the consequences of a particular employment experience are contingent on the race and gender of the worker. Indeed, it is difficult to isolate the effect of a given employment history from the way it is refracted through a worker's social group membership.


Author(s):  
Tran Le Huu Nghia ◽  
Phuong Hoang Yen ◽  
Tran Le Kim Huong

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been found to be effective in developing graduate employability. Working part-time while undertaking undergraduate studies may produce similar effects; however, its contribution to the development of students' employability has not yet been examined adequately. Therefore, this chapter will report a study investigating 22 Vietnamese pre-service teachers' experiences of how working as teaching assistants in commercial English language centers has contributed to their employability. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that part-time work experience elevated the pre-service teachers' specialized knowledge and skills, equipped them with soft skills, expanded their social networks, enhanced their adaptability to different work cultures, and modified their teacher identity. The chapter calls for universities to award credits for part-time work experience as a type of WIL, develop a mechanism for integrating it into curricula, and help graduates evidence their work experience to their future employers.


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