NOS News•
Working less than 35 hours a week is more often the norm for women than for men, and this starts immediately after completing a degree. This is evident from figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), which followed graduates in their first nine years on the labor market.
For example, 30 percent of women worked part-time a year after graduation, compared to 14 percent of men. At that time, both men and women were in paid work about equally. In the years that followed, the difference in the degree of part-time work became even greater.
Nine years after graduation, less than 10 percent of male employees worked part-time. The share of female part-timers had risen after nine years from 40 percent among women with a university degree to 67 percent among women with an MBO diploma.
Life-defining events
One reason for this difference is that women are more often trained to work in sectors where part-time is the norm, such as education and healthcare. But that’s not the only explanation.
Life-defining events, such as cohabitation and the birth of a child, have a greater effect on women’s careers than on men’s. For example, they are more likely than men to switch from a full-time job to a part-time job if, for example, they start living together or have a child.
The biggest jump occurs in the year the child is born. “Then it is the mothers who are more prepared to take care of a child, while men mainly continue to work full-time,” says researcher Tanja Traag.
Prevailing standard
A traditional division of roles is less important among women with an HBO or WO diploma than for women with an MBO diploma. “Because the level of education in the Netherlands is rising, you can conclude that the traditional image is diminishing,” says Traag.
According to Traag, these are very slow processes. “Many Dutch people still think that children should not go to childcare for more than three days. And 30 percent of men think that women are better at taking care of children. That is the prevailing norm.”
European level
From the CBS Emancipatiemonitor shows that women who work part-time increasingly often have a large part-time job, ie 28 to 35 hours a week. And although we are European ‘leader’ in part-time work, the Netherlands is also in the top when it comes to women with a job.
“In the Netherlands you can have a top job with four days a week, in other countries you simply don’t have a job,” says Traag. “It is often seen as something bad in a European context, while that is not necessarily the case – in the Netherlands you can go a long way with your part-time job.”
