Women’s Motives for Part-Time Employment in the Netherlands: An Analysis of Survey Data from 2008 to 2023

Rosa Glijn , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute
Kène Henkens, NIDI
Lonneke van den Berg, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Women spend substantially fewer hours in paid employment than men. Many studies have look at determinants of working hours of women, pointing to institutional, occupational, and individual factors. Next to looking at determinants of women’s working hours, another way to understand women’s part-time employment is looking at the motives reported by women themselves for working part-time. Motives relate to caring for children or family, unavailability of full-time work, health, education, anticipation of retirement, and having more time to oneself. Studying these motives is informative for understanding women’s employment patterns, as it provides insight in women’s lived experience in shaping their employment and consequently which restrictions they might experiences in doing so. In this study, we look at women's motives to working part-time, and whether they differ by educational attainment, household composition, and age. Furthermore, we research how motives and their determinants have developed between 2008 and 2023, in light of economic, cultural and institutional developments. We research this in the context of the Netherlands, the country with one of the highest gender gap in weekly work hours in Europe. We use pooled cross-sectional data from the LISS (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences) panel, including 16 waves (2008-2023). Preliminary findings show a high prevalence of motives of family situations, leisure, unavailability of full-time work and other activities at home. Over the years, we see the most change in the prevalence leisure motive (increase), the family situation motive (decrease) and the unavailability of full-time work motive (increase-decrease).

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 Presented in Session 76. The Gendered Dimension of Human Capital