Part-time work culture in the Netherlands
and its impact on women: a revolution at
work or a way to entrench the status
quo?
Testing the limits of the Dutch part -time work culture
UNIVERISTY OF AMSTERDAM GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL
SCIENCE
Part-time work culture in the Netherlands
and its impact on women: a revolution at
work or a way to entrench the status
quo?
Testing the limits of the Dutch part -time work culture
Master Thesis by Louise Faure 11751584
MSc Political Science: Political Economy University of Amsterdam
June 2018 Supervisor: Dr. S.J. Lim Second reader: Jana Krause
Preface and acknowledgements
After a very rewarding year within the Graduate School of Social Science of the University of Amsterdam, I am proud to present to you my final thesis in Political Economy. This work is the result of months of work at the university and at the recruitment agency Women in Sales.
The aim of my thesis was to understand the situation of working women in the Netherlands, and to see the impacts of the “one and a half earner” model. This concern is born out of a very personal yet quite common one, as I was wondering how I could ever balance my personal life and my career in the future. The Netherlands struck me as a country with an original, and seemingly well-functioning solution to the problem. My goal was to see exactly how well this situation is functioning for Dutch citizens, and especially women.
Working on my thesis was a very positive experience that taught me countless skills, but it could never have been possible without the constant help of my thesis supervisor Sijon Lim, who was always available to respond to my concerns and was thankfully very flexible regarding the theme of my research. I am also very grateful for the support of the company where I have worked, thanks to which I was able to gather all the data necessary for my thesis. I will never thank them enough for their support and guidance in this world of sales that was previously unknown to me. I want to give a special thanks to my supervisor Eva Lodevijks, who was a welcoming presence in the office and ready to answer all of my questions, even the most basic ones. Thank you for involving me in the life of the company, welcoming me with a smile everyday and make me want to go to the office even under the pouring rain of Amsterdam! I will miss your country music and stylish shoes. I also need to thanks Elles, the founder and CEO of Women in Sales, and Kim, the sales manager, for taking time off their busy schedules to help me get all the contacts I needed.
Lastly, I need to thank the respondents to the survey and the interviews, whose names I cannot say but whose testimonies were precious to my work. Thank you for taking time
in your busy schedule to speak to me, and than you for allowing me to travel through all the Netherlands to meet you!
Table of content
1. Introduction ... 7
1.1 The transformation of the workplace in the XXth century in the world and the Netherlands 8 1.2 Despite societal changes, a workplace tailored for male single-earners ... 9
1.3 The Netherlands, a fertile ground for research ... 11
1.4 Social and policy implications ... 13
2. Part-time work in the Netherlands: the pessimist and optimist vision ... 14
2.2 The first point of divide: Institutional motivations ... 15
2.1 The second point of divide: Individual motivation ... 17
2.3 Third point of divide: the impact of part-time culture on Dutch citizens’ well-being... 21
2.4 Last point of divide: the impact on gender roles in Dutch society ... 22
2.5 Our study: a mixed set of hypothesis... 24
3. Methodology ... 25
3.1 A case study: Dutch women in sales ... 25
3.2 Sources ... 26
3.3 Population... 29
4. Results ... 32
4.1 Checking employer’s motivations ... 32
4.1.1 Switching contract: the pessimist and optimist vision ...32
4.1.2. Switching to part-time: a possibility in theory, but a certain reluctance from employers ...33
4.2 Checking employee’s motivations ... 36
4.2.1 Employee’s motivations for choosing contracts: mixed findings...37
4.2.2 Reasons to adopt their current contract: professional development and income for full-time workers, a more nuanced portrait for part-timers. ...41
4.2.3 Having children: still a determinant factor ...44
4.2.4 Working in a male-dominated space: a specific identity ...46
4.3 Checking the impact on well-being and career perspectives ... 49
4.3.1 A positive impact on well-being confirmed, but dependent on a solid network of supportive relatives? ...49
4.3.2 A pessimistic view of the impact on women’s career: the part-time ceiling ...51
5. Discussion and conclusion ... 54
5.1 Main findings ... 56
5.1.1 employer’s motivation ...56
5.1.2 Employee’s motivations ...56
5.1.3 Impact on well-being and gender roles ...58
5.2 Theoretical reflection and generalizability ... 59
5.3 The path for further research ... 60
Abstract
During the last fifty years, restrictions on (married) women’s work were lifted and in mots industrialized countries, women have largely accessed the labor market and formal paid work. However, this change in mentalities regarding “acceptable” women’s work was not accompanied by a fair share of the workload, and employers struggle to adapt to the dual-earner model. What is more, within the household, things have also not evolved quite as fast: women still do the vast majority of house chores and childrearing. This leaves many women with a work-life dilemma and not enough time in the day. This research explores the Dutch answer, high quality part-time work, and four of its aspects: individual and institutional motivation, impact on well-being and gender equality.
1. Introduction
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”
Gloria Steinem
"The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor...and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare...even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids...even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn't be this difficult to raise healthy families." -
Michelle Obama
Recently, an article from the Guardian asked: “Why is the letter page still a male stronghold? The female viewpoint is underrepresented in correspondence to the Observer”1. The journalists had noticed that, though their readership was pretty balanced, more than two-third of their letters came from men. Under the Facebook post related to the article, readers suggested some valid explanations: women are less encouraged to speak up, men tend to be more confident, etc. But one of the most unexpected comments came from a woman: “What question is that? Because we have no time! Men are able to get off work and then relax, do whatever they want. When we get off work have to go to school to pick up the kids, wash them, prepare dinner, clean the house, go groceries shopping, plan dentist appointments. By the end of the day we are so exhausted. When on earth would we find the time and mental energy to send a letter to a newspaper?” This comment generated a lot of backlash, mostly from men saying that the dynamic was not the same in all couples, that a lot of men did their fair share of chores,
1Pritchard, Stephen. 2010, “The Readers’ Editor On… Why the Letters Page Is Still a Male Stronghold.” The Guardian, January 17, sec. Opinion.
etc. That comment, and the reactions it caused, tells a very interesting story: despite there being equality on paper and in the law system, a lot of women feel that they still face inequality in the house.
During the last century, women have gradually entered the formal workplace, and in western countries represent almost half of the workforce. Yet it seems that the workforce has hardly acknowledged this, as corporate culture remains very much designed for and by men. Women are still expected to do most of the housework and child care, even though they also have paid work to do, which means they often have to sacrifice a little bit of their career or their personal life, often a little of both, to keep a balance. Meanwhile, this is not a very big concern for men. This work wants to address a specific solution found to this dilemma in the Netherlands, namely part-time work, and address its causes and consequences in the Dutch society.
1.1 The transformation of the workplace in the XXth century in the world and the
Netherlands
In the second part of the 20th Century, the labor market underwent a radical transformation: it stopped being the strict monopoly of men, and opened to the female population of the world.
During World War I and II, many jobs were made available to women out of necessity, because the male population could not all fill them out anymore. Even though most of those opportunities vanished when the war ended, it laid the foundations for what would come to be known as the “quiet revolution”2, the slow entry of women in the workforce. Until the 1930s, women entered the workforce young and unmarried and left it as soon as they found a husband who could provide for them and their children. Between the 1930s and the 1960s came the “transitional area”, where women occupied more and more “pink collar positions”, working in education, libraries, or occupying clerical positions. Marital bans that forced married women out of the workforce ended
2GOLDIN, Claudia. 2006, The quiet revolution that transformed women's employment, education, and family. American economic review, vol. 96, no 2, p. 1-21.
gradually. Since the 1970s came the “quiet revolution”: women entered university and majored in various fields previously male-dominated such as business. Many women were not working out of necessity anymore, but because they valued work in itself. Legislations that discriminated against women were abolished, and anti-discrimination laws were passed to ensure that everyone had the same chances in the labor market.
Women in developed countries over the last fifty years have entered the workplace in droves, aspiring to the financial independence and career aspirations that had been denied to them for so long. Nowadays, while many jobs continue to be quite gender segregated, even men-dominated fields such as law and medicine saw a sharp increase in the number of women candidates. Forty percent of the world labor force is now female3 (in terms of paid work). Most leaders agree that women represent a pool of talented, often educated workers, and a big growth potential for the economy. In the words of Ban-Ki Moon, former UN secretary general: “Removing the barriers that keep women and girls on the margins of economic, social, cultural, and political life must be a top priority for us all – businesses, governments, the United Nations, and civil society4.”
1.2 Despite societal changes, a workplace tailored for male single-earners
However, in reality gender stereotypes change slowly. Women are still under represented in management and board positions. According to the CS Gender 3000 data of Crédit Suisse5, gender diversity in the boardroom has reached 14.7% in 2015, meaning that less than 20% of board members of companies worldwide are women, despite representing 40% of the workforce. Women have a hard time rising to the top of
companies, even though they may make up half of their initial workforce. One
3World Bank.“Labor Force, Female (% of Total Labor Force) | Data.” Accessed March 15, 2018.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS?end=2017&start=1990.
4UN Women “Press Release: Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Hillary Clinton and Business Leaders Call for
Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rights.”. Accessed May 22, 2018.
http://www.unwomen.org/news/stories/2015/3/press-release-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon-hillary-clinton-and-business-leaders.
5Crédit Suisse.“Csri-Gender-3000.pdf.” Accessed May 22, 2018.
explanation is that decision makers in most companies are more comfortable dealing with men: decision makers report feeling a high comfort level when dealing with men 75% of the time, versus 23% of the time when dealing with women6. Male managers also prefer to work with their own sex. Since they are “intruders”, women in companies are held to higher standards: they are expected to demonstrate greater personal strength than men and to prove themselves more extensively before receiving a promotion7.
In fact, and quite surprisingly when one thinks about the extent of the phenomenon, corporate culture did not follow the extreme transformation in the population of workers. Workplaces nowadays are still built for male single-breadwinners who are implicitly expected to delegate family and home responsibilities to someone else, while they can dedicate their whole time to the company. Corporate culture still rewards long working hours and availability to respond to work inquiries during the employee’s free time.
In addition, gender roles have not changed that much: women in the world still do more than two-third of the unpaid work (cooking, cleaning, child raising), which puts them at a disadvantage in terms of developing and using their full human capital potential in the labor market8. As a result, many women struggle to find a balance between their career and the unpaid work that is expected of them, an issue that men face to a much lesser extent. More than fifty years after the coming of women in the labor market, it seems that the workplace – and gender norms – still did not adapt to the new reality.
6Ruderman, M. M., Ohlott, P. J., & Kram, K. E. 1995. Promotional decisions as a diversity practice. In K. S.
McDonald Q L. M. Hite (Eds.), Journal of Management Development [Special issue: Gender issues in management development], 14(2), 6-23.
7Ruderman, M. M., Ohlott, P. J., & Kram, K. Op. Cit. p.11
8Europa.“Women and Unpaid Work: Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute!” Accessed March 18, 2018.
1.3 The Netherlands, a fertile ground for research
In the Netherlands, from 1860 to 1960 the level of labor force participation of men and women was nearly constant9: 30 percent of women and 90 percent of men in the age of working participated held paid jobs. However, it rose swiftly after the 1960s, and in 1999, the employment rate of women had risen to 59 percent, above the EU average. It is now 71,7 percent, higher than the OECD and even European average10. This rise is due to the participation of married women, and women with children: In 1973, 1 in 10 mothers with children of pre-school age worked for wages; in 1998, this number rose to more than half11. Another explanation is that increased levels of education and higher wages increased the opportunity costs of staying at home. Women, after getting a university education, could turn to more highly paid jobs, and thanks to machines and externalization, household work became less time-consuming. Between 1950 and 1990 the average time spent by Dutch women on domestic chores dropped from 70 to 30 hours per week12.
Mentalities seem to have accompanied this change, and Dutch people are more accepting of working women with children than they used to be. In 1965, 84% of the Dutch population had “reservations “concerning working mothers of children of school age. In 1970 disapproval dropped to 44%, and then to a mere 18% in 199713. Legislation too has changed: The General Equal treatment Act of 1994 makes it illegal for employers
9Groot, W. and Pott-Buter, H. 1993, ‘Why Married Women’s Labor Supply in the Netherlands has
Increased’, De Economist 141: 238–55.
10 The OECD. “Employment - Employment Rate - OECD Data.” Accessed June 1, 2018.
http://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate.htm.
11Visser, J. 2002, The first part-time economy in the world: a model to be followed?. Journal of European Social Policy, 12(1), 23-42.
12Tijdens, K., van der Lippe, T. and de Ruyter, E. 2000, Huishoudelijke arbeid en de zorg voor
kinderen (Household Work and the Care of Children). The Hague: Elsevier.
13SCP. 1998. Sociaal en cultureel rapport 1998: 25 jaar sociale verandering (Social and Cultural Report 1998:
to favor people on the basis of personal characteristics such as gender or sexual preference14.
What sets the Netherlands apart is its unique response to the work-life balance dilemma: part-time work. In the Low Countries, reduced work hours are so accepted that 37.7% of the population opts for it: 18.7% of men and 59.8% of women15. In the land of part-time work, Dutch people report the highest work-life balance satisfaction of the OECD, and one of the highest life satisfactions. Optimists claim that, thanks to part-time work, women are able to find a balance between their work and career and this is the reason why Dutch people constantly rank very high in happiness indexes. According to them, Dutch employers have understood the realities of dual-earning couples and acknowledged it by allowing their employees to do the same job part-time, a “slimmed-down” full-time, as opposed to part-time jobs in other European countries that are of low qualities with few responsibilities. Many argue that those high-quality part-time jobs are the solution to work-life conflicts women experience, and that they reflect the workplace finally adapting to the reality of dual earners. It is important to notice that the OECD defines part-time work as “people in employment (whether employees or self-employed) who usually work less than 30 hours per week in their main job”16. By all accounts, the Netherlands is a best-case scenario of successful work-life balance policies.
But is this correct? Or is this, as pessimists argue, another way of confining women to lower-status jobs and making sure they still have time for “women’s work” (childcare or housekeeping)? Are men ready to take time off work to share domestic duties?
Our research will try to judge this by submitting the different visions to test, through multiple methods. We will focus on women in sales professions, as it is an interesting case study for us: a male-dominated sector within a part-time-friendly country. This is a least-likely case nested in a most-likely context: it is a way for us to test that
14ILO.“Netherlands - Act of 2 March 1994 Laying down General Rules for the Protection against Discrimination
on Grounds of Religion, Philosophy of Life, Political Conviction, Race, Sex, Nationality, Hetero- or Homosexual Inclination or Marital Status (General Act on Equal Treatment).” Accessed May 22, 2018. https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/natlex4.detail?p_lang=en&p_isn=44494.
15The OECD. “Employment - Part-Time Employment Rate - OECD Data.” Accessed May 31, 2018.
http://data.oecd.org/emp/part-time-employment-rate.htm.
likely” context of the Netherlands. Since it is a least-likely case (a case with unfriendly conditions for part-time: a men-dominated environment), if the optimist vision prevails, it will be an exceptionally strong point for them: even in “hostile” environments, the Dutch part-time culture prevails and has the same positive impacts. However, if pessimist expectations prove to be true, it will show the limits of the Dutch work-life balance model.
However, our hypotheses are mixed, and not only optimistic: as we will see later, we sometimes side with the pessimists on specific issues. After looking closely at the beliefs of the optimist side and the pessimist one, we have divided them into four aspects: institutional motivations, personal motivations, impacts on Dutch well-being and impact on gender roles. We have then tested those four sides of the question through a survey and a series of interviews, and gathered our findings in four categories: employer’s motivation (for the institutional side), employee’s motivations (for the personal one), impact on well-being and impact on women’s careers (to test the impact on gender roles).
1.4 Social and policy implications
If women are “forced” in this pattern of ‘one-and-a-half-earner’ because of the lack of childcare options, then the policy implications are important. In order for every one, both men and women, to be able to balance their time between work and family as they wish, both the private and public sector would have to make efforts.
The Dutch model of family policy consists on relying heavily on part-time work and the “one and a half” earner model. However, other countries in Europe have taken other paths, and the Netherlands could follow their example.
The Dutch government could increase affordable childcare options or make a more diverse range of options available to parents, taking example on Nordic European countries that provide a complementary mix of generous parental leave pay following birth, a large supply of affordable childcare services and direct income transfers to the family. Another model within continental Europe that stands as an exception is France: an allowance is paid to parents who want to stay home following the birth of their child
(for a period that varies with the child’s birth order), and state-funded childcare is widely available on a full-time basis, including for very young children (in theory from 3 months of age)17. This leaves the choice to most parents between staying at home and leaving their children in reliable, affordable childcare centers, though it can generate inequalities for the parents that are still not able to afford formal care and that have no choice but to take parental leave, suffering the consequences for their careers.
Dutch companies, on the other hand, could encourage more fathers to take time off work to raise their children, and make sure that it does not penalize their career prospects, or that of mothers. They could allow people in all kind of sectors and positions to work part-time, and become more like the optimists think they already are.
In short, if the pessimist version is confirmed, then the policy implications are important, as it would reveal a real dysfunction of the system. This is why this research matters, as it deals with a potential major flaw in the family support system in one of the country that supposedly is one of the best in the matter.
2. Part-time work in the Netherlands: the pessimist and optimist
vision
The literature on women’s part-time work in the Netherlands is extremely divided. On one hand, the pessimists say that part-time work is a way to accommodate gender division of tasks, by assigning lower-level jobs to women and giving them time to perform their “duties” as wives and mothers. On the other hand, optimists argue that the popularity of part-time arrangements reflects individual preferences of balancing life and work, and that as a result Dutch people report one of the highest levels of life satisfaction in the world. We will see how the two sides have radically different views of
17Thévenon, Olivier. 2011, “Family Policies in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis.” Population and Development Review 37, no. 1 57–87.
different aspects of part-time work: individual motivation, institutional motivations, impact on individual well-being and gender roles in Dutch society.
2.2 The first point of divide: Institutional motivations
The two sides also differ in what they think are the institutional motivations for encouraging part-time work. Optimists believe that this state of things reflects the deep changes of mentality of employers. Pushed by the supply of employees who are not ready to sacrifice their lives to their job, employers have begun to create contracts in which they accept the employees have non-workplace responsibilities, and abandon the myth of the single male breadwinner who can dedicate his life to the company while someone else takes care of his domestic life. According to them, this reflects an evolution of the workplace, adapting to its new population made up partly of women. The Dutch state, in return, has successfully adopted adequate regulation to protect part-time workers. Coordinated wage policies, combined with a minimum wage, have narrowed the differences between part-time and full-time employment18. This lead to the creation of quality part-time jobs: where in other countries, part-time jobs can be unrewarding and offer few career perspectives, in the Netherlands it is more a “slimmed-down” job than a second-class one.19 Because the government introduced legislation ensuring that the rights of part-time workers are protected, part-time work is not limited to marginal jobs but is now a feature of mainstream Dutch employment. For optimists, the institutional motivations behind part-time culture are to put behind the “housewife and working husband” model, and to acknowledge changes of gender roles and aspirations in society by providing an opportunity for everyone to combine quality paid work and childcare (or other activities).
18 Visser, Jelle. Op. Cit. p.9
19Roeters, Anne, and Lyn Craig. “Part-Time Work, Women’s Work–life Conflict, and Job Satisfaction: A
Cross-National Comparison of Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.”
International Journal of Comparative Sociology 55, no. 3 (June 1, 2014): 185–203.
On the other hand, this vision is strongly contested by pessimists, who point out a huge gap between the genders: 59,8% of Dutch women work part-time, but only 18,7% of men20. What is more, the highest proportion of men who work part-time are between 14 and 24, indicating that for most men, part-time work is just a student experience, a temporary step before getting a “real” full-time job. However, for women, the proportions are very different: most women who work part-time are between 25 and 49, indicating that they really settled into their part-time careers21. Based on those facts, pessimists are skeptical of the real transformative potential of the part-time jobs culture, because they are disproportionately “women’s contract”, and do not, according to them, reflect change in both gender’s work culture. Indeed, pessimists argue that the part-time culture is a way for society to combine women’s will to have paid work and their traditional domestic tasks. Pessimists say that gender roles are not undermined but actually reinforced by such workplace configuration; to support their claim, they point out that Dutch women still spend twice as much time as Dutch men doing unpaid work (254.3 minutes per day for women, against 132.9 minutes per day for men22). Research has show that, in households where the male works full-time in the market sector, an increase in market work by the female is associated with a less than proportional decrease in her housework while the partner’s housework stays much the same23. Dutch Time Use Surveys for the years 2000 and 2005 shows that, as female hours of market work increase, male hours of housework remain almost constant. For pessimists, institutional motivations for the part-time culture are to simply accommodate women’s want to work without disrupting gender roles.
On this point, the evidence tends to side more with the pessimist vision. Gender roles are not changing very much in the Dutch society, and women still do the vast majority of household chores. Men do not take advantage of the opportunity to leave work to take care of their family. Indeed, part-time contracts seem to be reserved for women – and
20The OECD. Op. Cit. p.12
21Plantenga, Janneke. 1996 , “For Women Only? The Rise of Part-Time Work in the Netherlands.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 3, no. 1: 57–71. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/3.1.57.
22The OECD.“Employment : Time Spent in Paid and Unpaid Work, by Sex.” Accessed March 16, 2018.
http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757#.
perhaps women’s jobs (services, care, education, etc). As a result, we expect employers in male-dominated fields to not be very open to part-time options, which is an hypothesis that we will test later.
2.1 The second point of divide: Individual motivation
Optimists and pessimists disagree on why women decide to undertake part-time jobs. According to optimists, women decide to leave their full-time jobs because they desire a better work-life balance, and wish to dedicate themselves to other things such as family, social work or hobbies. Optimists support this argument by saying that the Dutch have the highest satisfaction within the OECD in terms of work-life balance24.
According to pessimists, women choose to work part-time because they have no other choice, as there is a lack of affordable childcare in the Netherlands. To support this, they point out that part-timers are mostly women with childcare responsibilities25: women with children under 12 account for more than 80 per cent of voluntary part-time workers in the Netherlands.26 It is impossible to ignore the links between part time work and traditional gender roles. Indeed, in the Netherlands there is little institutional support for working mothers: childcare is relatively expensive, and mostly available on a part-time basis. According to OECD statistics, the Netherlands is a “high cost” country for healthcare, along with New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom or the United States27. Research by Vanessa Gash has shown that this lack of support is strongly
24The OECD. “OECD Better Life Index.” Accessed April 3, 2018.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/.
25Booth, Alison L., and Jan C. van Ours. 2013, “Part-Time Jobs: What Women Want?” Journal of Population Economics 26, no. 1: 263–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-012-0417-9.
26Zaken, Ministerie van Algemene. 2011, “Women’s Labour Force Participation - Gender Equality -
Government.nl.” Onderwerp. https://www.government.nl/topics/gender-equality/womens-labour-force-participation.
27The OECD.“OECD countries_Richardson.pdf.” Accessed April 5, 2018.
correlated with an impediment for full-time employment28. In countries with more institutional support for childcare such as Denmark or France, there is little to no negative effect of young children on women’s transitions to full- time employment; in contrast, in countries with little childcare support like the United Kingdom, this lack of options hinders women’s perspectives of transitioning to full-time employment. When we compare it with a country where most children are placed in formal daycare and that mother’s full-time employment rate is very high, like Denmark, we see that only 17% of children age 0-3 are in formal pre-school childcare in the Netherlands, against 64% in Denmark. Only 2.9% of 4-13 years old in the Netherlands use out-of-school care, against 81% to 6-9 years old in Denmark. Public spending on formal childcare represents 0.1% of the Dutch GDP of 2001, but 2.1% if the Danish one29. Mothers in the Netherlands rely notoriously on informal childcare, and do not use full-time childcare options, as they are few and expensive.
There is a dire shortage of affordable childcare in the Netherlands. Before kindergarten – not available before four years old --, there is very little official care centers, and child day care centers are run by private (commercial and non-profit) institutions. The capacity rate of formal pre-school child care centers is 13.3% of the total children in the age group 0-4, although it climbs to 98.5% for children of 4 and 5, thanks to kindergartens (that operate maximum 5.5 hours a day)30. As shown in figure 1, the financial incentive to work is very small: if the second earner earns the minimum wage and purchases five days of childcare in the unsubsidized sector, this will cost 84% of the increase in after tax earnings. Since the price of childcare is often proportional to the family income, a worker with an average salary will have even less to gain by working; however, if a worker purchases only 3 days of childcare, the increase in income will be relatively higher. Even in subsidized childcare, around half of the after-tax earning of the second worker go to childcare.
28 Gash, Vanessa. 2008, “Preference or Constraint? Part-Time Workers’ Transitions in Denmark, France and the
United Kingdom.” Work, Employment and Society 22, no. 4: 655–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017008096741.
29TheOECD. “Babies and Bosses - Reconciling Work and Family Life (Volume 1),” October 24, 2002.
https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264161139-en.
Figure 1: Childcare costs as a percentage of net earnings of a second earner in a couple in the Netherlands (source: OECD, 2002)
As a result, parents are driven to informal care, provided by relatives or themselves. There is very little incentive to work full-time, unless the child is minded for a fraction of the price by a relative.
This definitely support the pessimist vision that women choose part-time because their options are limited, not necessarily because they want to prioritize childcare over their careers. Moreover, as we will explain later, Dutch women are still expected to do the majority of childcare and housework. This is why, in the pessimist vision, female workers have few other choices than to opt for part-time jobs with a few hours per week, because on neither the microlevel of the household nor the macro level of society level has a start been made toward a fundamental reconsideration of the existing gendered expectations about paid work and caregiving.
However, those motivations are extremely hard to measure, because of the role of reverse causation: people tend to adapt their wants to the reality. Research has shown that women and men indeed adjust their desires to changing social situation, and this is
especially true of part-time work. For example, constrained part-timers were quite likely to claim that they chose to work part-time after some time; it was also found that workers whose possibility of switching to full-time work decreased were the most likely to change their reasons for working part-time31. Mothers especially are likely to change their attitudes regarding childcare and work – and even their personality traits, such as, being highly committed to paid work -- when their plans prove impossible to archive32.
This makes preference determination very hard to understand: do mothers really want to take care of children and work part-time? Or rather, if the situation had been different and childcare affordable and convenient, would they have preferred to keep working full-time?
Despite this limit, we tend to side with optimists on that aspect. Maybe mothers do adjust their expectations, but the fact that Dutch people report extremely high work-life balance satisfaction, even in comparison with countries where childcare is more affordable, suggests that the part-time system is working and people truly wish to work part-time because it allows for a better work-life balance. If this is the case, then women who work full-time choose to do it because they are dedicated to their careers, not because they fear that part-time will “hold back” their professional ambitions or because they do not have children yet. Fields of work that are dominated by full-time contracts, if our hypotheses is right, will be filled with women who are very career-driven and dedicated to their work. Their children situation should not significantly affect their type of work contract. We will test that later.
31Galtier, B. 1999, ‘Les temps partiels: entre emplois choisis et emplois “faute de mieux”’, Economie et
Statistique 1( 2): 57–77
32Himmelweit, S. and Sigala, M. 2005, ‘Internal and External Constraints on Mothers Employment’, Journal of
2.3 Third point of divide: the impact of part-time culture on Dutch citizens’ well-being
Optimists say that the impact of part-time culture for Dutch society is undeniably positive. According to the optimist vision, part-time works simply makes people happier: it is associated with lower work-to-family interference, better time management ability, and improved life satisfaction33. The Netherlands ranks very high in levels of happiness of the population: according to the World Happiness Report, an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the Netherland ranks 6th in global happiness of its population, out of 155 countries34. In fact, Dutch people rank consistently high in life satisfaction and time use indicators. They also rank above the average in income and wealth, jobs and earnings, housing, education and skills, subjective well-being, social connections, environmental quality, personal safety, civic engagement, and health status35. Optimists conclude that whatever the status quo is, it seems to be working. Research has shown that partnered women in part-time work in the Netherlands have high levels of job satisfaction and a low desire to change their working hours36.
However, pessimists urge the public to be careful with life satisfaction indexes, because of the very strong bias of people adjusting expectations to the situation, rather than being dissatisfied. Susan Himmelweit and Maria Sigala37 found that personal attitude and financial or availability constraints played a significant role in the mother’s explanation for their decisions (financial constrained mothers who could not afford daycare tended to express a preference for working part-time, and wealthy mothers who could afford childcare said they would rather work full-time), leaving a doubt on whether their work contracts were the results of sole personal preference. In general,
33 Higgins, Chris, Linda Duxbury, and Karen Lea Johnson. 2000, “Part-Time Work for Women: Does It Really Help
Balance Work and Family?” Human Resource Management 39, no. 1: 17–32.
https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-050X(200021)39:1<17::AID-HRM3>3.0.CO;2-Y.
34Report, World Happiness. “Overview.” World Happiness Report. Accessed April 11, 2018. /. 35The OECD.“OECD Better Life Index.” Op. Cit. p.15
36Booth, Alison L., and Jan C. van Ours. Op. Cit. p.15. 37Himmelweit, Susan, and Maria Sigala. Op. Cit. p. 18
preferences are extremely hard to measure convincingly, and the risk of reverse causation in preference formation is very high. Dutch women might indeed be very happy with the status quo, but it may be just because they are good at making do with the situation, rather than because they really do not wish to change it.
However, Dutch people are significantly more satisfied than other OECD countries about their work-life balance: countries that have a much larger options of formal childcare available to them, like France, still report lower levels of life and work-life balance satisfaction. In our opinion, this shows that the impact of part-time culture on well-being is overall positive. In subsequent interviews, we will see how women manage their work/life balance, but bearing in mind that they may to some extent adjust their expectations to fit the reality.
2.4 Last point of divide: the impact on gender roles in Dutch society
Lastly, the two sides have very different views regarding the impact of part-time culture on gender roles in Dutch society. Dutch society is happier as a result of the part-time culture, because it allows people to allocate their time according to their preference, without forcing them to choose between their professional or personal life, regardless of their gender. According to optimists, gender roles can be challenged by the part-time culture: since part-time work can be rewarding and high quality, it may encourage more fathers to take that opportunity and be more involved in childcare or other non work-related activities. However, that is supported by little evidence, as the rate of women and men working part-time differs by more than 40 points (59,8% of women for 18,7% of men38).
Indeed, pessimists are quick to point out the long-term results of part-time culture. While part-time work may not directly affect hourly gender pay gaps, it does affect term career and earnings progression of women. Though to our knowledge, no long-term study has been made in the Netherlands to compare career perspective of women working part-time and full-time, it is easy to notice that they are underrepresented in
managerial positions, in the private and public sector. There is 28% of female senior management in central government, against an OECD average of 33%39. Women in the Netherlands make up only 26% of private companies’ managers, for an OECD average of 31.2%. This has an impact on women’s financial stability throughout their lives: they are three time more likely than men to experience income decrease after a divorce, and their pension income is on average about 45% lower than men’s40. As a result, gender roles are very much reinforced by the part-time culture. According to pessimists, it is not a revolution at work but quite the opposite: a new way to circumvent the compatibility problem between women’s career ambitions and their assigned gender role; by compromising on their careers possibilities, part-time contracts make sure women still have time for traditional “women’s work” (childcare, domestic responsibilities). According to pessimists, men do not choose the part-time option because they know it limits their professional perspectives, unlike women they aren’t “expected” to do housework, and they conform to their gender role as main breadwinner. As a result, pessimists think that, far from challenging gender roles, part-time culture reinforces them.
Unfortunately, we tend to side with the pessimists on that last aspect, as all evidence points out that gender roles are not challenged as a result of part-time culture, and women keep doing most of house chores. We think that senior jobs are harder to get with a part-time contract, which may positively select women who are more career-focused into the profession. However, it is likely balanced by something else: senior jobs are generally a late-career position, where women are less likely to want part-time jobs because of decreased childcare responsibility. In the optimistic vision, working part-time does not stop women from being able to get senior positions when they get older, if they return to full-time. We will also test this hypothesis later.
39Compare your country.“Compare Your Country - The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle.” Accessed
April 11, 2018. //www.compareyourcountry.org/gender-equality?lg=en.
40The OECD.“Gender2017-NLD-En.pdf.” Accessed April 11, 2018.
2.5 Our study: a mixed set of hypothesis
To sum up, part-time work is a very divisive topic among scholars, but little work has been done to support one point or the other. For example, to our knowledge no research has been made on the relationship between career advancement and part-time work in the Netherlands, to check if women who work part-time during their career end up at a lower position in the company compared to women who have always worked full time. No one so far has really tried to uncover the motivations for women to work part-time or full-time in the Netherlands, a country that is worth studying on its own because of its exceptional part-time culture.
As we have seen, our hypotheses are mixed: we side with the pessimists on institutional motivations and impact on the Dutch society, but with the optimists on personal motivations and impact on well-being.
We want to submit the optimist vision to a hard test: our study will try to uncover if women in sales – a male-dominated field - are still able to choose their contract freely, according to preferences. The filed of sales is dominated by full-time contracts, so if our hypotheses is right it means that women who choose to work in sales are very career-driven and dedicated to their work. We also expect little work/life conflict, since according to our hypothesis women in sales position chose their contract. If our work confirms that vision, then it will make a good case for the optimists, or at least those aspects of their theory.
However, we expect employers to be more reluctant to give part-time contracts to women with sales jobs, as they might face less pressure to offer part-time contracts since there are few women in the profession. We also think that senior and perhaps even mid-career jobs will be hardly compatible with part-time contracts.
If we find that women in sales are obliged to work in full-time, or maintained in low-positions their whole careers if they decide to work part-time at some point, then it will have important policy implications. This would be a starting point for the Dutch state (and companies) to address that problem and maybe adapt corporate culture to include
more flexible work hours into the highest spheres of management and in male-dominated sectors like sales.
3. Methodology
We have chosen to focus on the Dutch women that are working in sales, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the four aspects identified previously: employer’s (institutional) motivation, employee’s (personal) motivation, impact on well-being and impact on gender roles, with a stronger focus on employer and employee’s motivations.
3.1 A case study: Dutch women in sales
Our case is interesting: the Netherlands is a best-case scenario of successful work-life balance policies. The Dutch labor force works part-time at an incredible rate: 37.7% of jobs in 2016 in the Netherlands were part-time; 18,7% of men and 59,8% of Dutch women do not go to work every weekday41. According to optimists, in the Netherlands women and men freely chose part-time work to find a better balance between work and private life; their part-time job can be considered a “slimmed-down” normal job that offers roughly the same career prospects. In this vision, part-time work represents a quiet revolution against corporate culture and the myths of the "nonemployed caregiver" and the "carefree employee": it is an acknowledgment by employers that workers have other responsibilities and need more free time.
However, pessimists make strong points as well, the most important one being that this arrangement may just strengthen gender stereotypes, as the very vas majority of part-time workers are women. Our aim is to weight in the debate, make different hypothesis that correspond either to the pessimist or to the optimist vision and then test them.
We want to put our hypothesis to a hard test. We chose to focus within that country in the specific sector of sales, that is very male-dominated. For many reasons, few women
choose to apply and, and then stay, in that field: “masculine” qualities such as assertiveness, aggressiveness and sense of competition are valued, and it requires a high degree of confidence, something that women have a much harder times gaining than men42. Most of the contracts are full-time and few are available in part-time. In those conditions, even the optimists would have a hard time arguing that corporate culture really allows women to work part-time freely within the field of sales. This is why findings that would corroborate the optimist vision in this least-likely case would provide very strong support for the optimists. If, even in a male-dominated field where full-time contracts are the majority, women are still free to choose their own contract and manage their work-life balance as they like, then it strongly confirms the fact that employers in the Netherlands have truly changed their approach to work. This confirmation would be solid because it is the result of a risky prediction: that even in space where the theory is not expected to hold (sales), it still does. This would be a proof of achievement from the Dutch, and crown with laurels the efforts of employers and the government combined to create a healthier workplace for everyone.
On the other hand, if the theory is disproved and women in sales departments are indeed constrained to accept full-time jobs because the corporate culture does not really allow for fulfilling part-time careers, then it would highlight the limits of the optimist vision and even suggest that part-time work arrangements might constrain women into certain fields. If we find that women are constrained by childrearing duties (maybe women who work full-time in sales all have in common to have exceptional child care available), then the cases when we have optimist expectations do not hold.
3.2 Sources
Our research will be based on two sets of data, coming from two sources: the results of a large survey and a panel of interviews. All the contacts have been found through a recruiting agency, Women in Sales Netherlands, which promotes diversity in sales departments. They have access to a network of more than 15,000 female sales
42MOHR, Tara Sophia. 2014. Why women don’t apply for jobs unless they’re 100% qualified. Harvard Business Review, vol. 25.
professionals and work with over 80 companies. Their portfolio includes names like Ray Ban, Accenture, Rabobanks, BMW, etc. Among the brands they work with, there may be an overrepresentation of sectors like Information Technology, engineering, software design, ect.: many male-dominated fields that women seldom enter (hence the need to call Women In Sales). This is okay, because if our optimist expectations prove to be right (little work-life conflict, women who work full-time are very dedicated to their careers, etc.) even in this unfriendly context, then it will prove to be a stronger point for the optimists. In addition, employers in male-dominated sectors might be less likely to allow women to work time because in their eyes only “women’s jobs” can function part-time, and that is not what they are offering. This way, we will be able to test the hypothesis that employers might not be open to work/life balance solutions. If, however, those sectors prove to be open to flexible work schedules, it will be strong point in favor of the optimistic vision.
Women In Sales provided with the support and the connexions needed to undergo this research, and Most of the women interviewed were placed by Women in Sales at their current company.
A survey sent to human resource management, in order to get basic statistics about the gender ratio of their team, did not manage to get enough answers to be exploitable. However, the second survey sent to women working in sales position was more successful and managed to gather 59 responses. This one collected information about the contract of women, their career paths (if they used to work part-time/full-time, get basic insight at why they switched or not), the number of young children they have, etc. The purpose of this survey is to understand the patterns: is the population of women in sales very varied, or is it composed of, for example, a majority of full-timers with no child responsibilities?
Through this survey, we hope to understand: if full-time “career” women are more ambitious and less family-driven than “part-time” women, if a switch of contract has to do with childcare availability, if the contract women hold affect their position within the sales department, etc.
So for example, if we find that women in sales have child responsibilities, yet prioritize their career and rely on other sources for childcare, then this might be a case for the optimists. However, if we see that women working in sales mostly have no children or only older children, this might question if working is sales is really possible for women with infants.
We also have realized a series of 11 interviews of a representative sample of women who work. The goal of those interviews is to understand the mechanisms between the women’s decision to work part-time or full-time, and their satisfaction with the status quo.
We have to be careful with that last point, because we might encounter a difficult bias: the adjustment of expectations. Indeed, attitudes and preferences tend to change in response to a changing social situation. To quote Vanessa Gash: “Using panel data Galtier (1999) finds that workers with decreased probabilities of moving out of part-time employment are the most likely to change their reasons f or working parttime. Part -timers who initially defined themselves as under -employed, that is those who were unable to find/obtain a full-time job at time period 1, were quite likely to claim that they chose to work part-time at time period 2. Qualitative analyses also show how working preferences change to accommodate social constraints. Interviewing respondents at two points in time, Himmel weit and Sigala (2005 ) found mothers changed their attitudes and intentions concerning their childcare and employment arrangements when external constraints made their plans impossible to achieve. They also found instances where personality traits (such as, being highly committed to paid work) changed–to accommodate external constraints.”43
We hope to deal with that bias through the survey in which we ask women to rank their preferences and the factors that lead them to accept a certain contract. We also never, in the survey or during the interview, ask questions such as: “are you satisfied” or “do you like your contract”, but really understand what mechanisms drove them to a certain type of job.
43Gash, Vanessa. Op. Cit. p.15
3.3 Population
For the interview, we have selected 11 women in the sales profession, in different types of contract and positions.
Name Position Sector Contract Children
Woman 1 Business advisor Bank/finance /insurance
FT (40h/week) No
Woman 2 Account manager Construction FT (40h/week) No Woman 3 Sales consultant Technology FT (40h/week) Yes Woman 4 Account director Technology FT (40h/week) Yes Woman 5 Account manager Edcuation FT (36h/week) Yes Woman 6 Shop manager Construction FT (40h/week on
4 days)
No
Woman 7 Account manager Construction FT (looking for another job of 40h/week on 4 days)
No
Woman 8 Sales consultant Technology FT (40h/week) No Woman 9 Coordinator purchasing
and facility management
Recruitment FT (40h/week) No
Woman 10
Key account manager Food/beverag es
FT (40h/week) No
Woman 11
Account manager Media industry
PT (32h/week) Yes
FT= Full-time, PT= Part-time
We also talked to a few Human Resource Managers to check on the employer’s, “institutional” side of the situation.
Name Position Sector
HR manager 1 HR for sales consumer market
Telecom
HR manager 2 HR for sales business market
Telecom
HR manager 3 HR for new business
Telecom
HR manager 4 HR manager Finance
HR manager 5 Telecom program manager; diversity manager
Electronics
We have received 58 answers for the survey, not as much as we had hoped but still an exploitable number.
The mean age of the respondents to the survey was 36 (with a standard deviation of 9 years), which is fairly young. However, for us it is perfect as it is the prime chilbearing years: the mother’s mean age at first birth in the Netherlands is 29.6 years (2015 estimations)44. Hence it is a good occasion for us to observe potential work-life conflict.
44CIA. “The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency.” Accessed May 15, 2018.
Figure 3: Motherhood situation within the population of women in sales surveyed (source: survey, 2018)
51.7% of those women do not have children, which is a relatively high number. We must keep that in mind when we look at the statistics regarding part-time work.
It seems that a lot of women in sales professions do not have children, or have them late. 25% of women have children that are over 4 and 19% have children that are under 4.
Figure 5: Types of contracts held by the population of women in sales surveyed, compared with the population of working women in the Netherlands (source: survey, 2018, Employment - Part-Time Employment Rate - OECD Data, 2018)
55% 20%
25%
Women in Sales' motherhood situation
No children Chil(dren) under 4 Child(ren) over 4
Full-time 79% Part-time 21%
Type of contract held by Women in Sales in the Netherlands
Full-time 41% Part-time 59%
Types of contract held by women in the Netherlands, all sectors
Most women in sales hold full-time contracts. The proportion of part-time, combined, is 20.6%: a sharp contrast to the general Dutch female population, whose proportion of part-time workers is 58.8%45. Women in the sales professions are close to 80% (79.4%) to work full-time. If our optimistic explanation is right, it is because this field attracts more women that are career-driven. However, if our pessimistic hypothesis is right, the field of sales positively selects career-driven women because employers are not ready to allow women in sales to have part-time contracts.
4. Results
We have divided our results in 4 categories, according to each dimension that we were testing: employer’s motivations, employee’s motivations, Impact on Dutch citizens’ well being, and Impact on gender roles.
4.1 Checking employer’s motivations
We have chosen to focus on employers only for the “institutional” side, because the data was more readily available, and they are the main actors in this transformation of the Dutch work culture. A real change in the mentality of employers would make a world of difference for working people, men and women.
4.1.1 Switching contract: the pessimist and optimist vision
For pessimists, institutional motivations for the part-time work culture are to allow women some time to perform their gender-assigned role, while also having a career. However, according to pessimists employers may not be willing to let women (or men) work part-time in male-dominated fields, because they see part-time work as reserved
to women (and hence to “women’s jobs”) and may be reluctant to bring it to a male-dominate culture.
For optimists, employers now realize that the model of single-earning household is obsolete, and that both men and women need more flexibility and time away from work to care for their families. According to that logic, employers in all domains should allow their workers to go part-time.
Among the respondents to our survey, only 12.1% changed from part-time to full-time, and 17.2% from full-time to part-time. 70.7% of women who answered the survey never changed their work contract, which is very high.
Figure 6: Changes in contract of women in sales surveyed (source: survey, 2018)
4.1.2. Switching to part-time: a possibility in theory, but a certain reluctance from employers
During the interviews, we asked the women in sales professions who worked full-time if they could switch to part-time at this moment in their career.
Almost all of them said it would be possible to work part-time now if they wished to renegotiate their contract. But 6 of them mentioned the fact that their employers might be reluctant: “Regarding my boss? Yeah, if I would say: “I want to work 60%”, he would
say yes, but he wouldn’t like it”46. One of the women had a 4-days contract, but even though she was still willing to work 40 hours, her employer was reluctant and accepted that arrangement only after hearing positive things about her:
“I asked them to work 4 days, and at first they didn’t want to do it because everybody works 5 days, in the company. And then I told them okay, then I don’t want to work for
XXX because I want to work 4 days. I don’t mind if I work 10, 11, 12 hours a day but I want to have one day off for my master. And then the CEO called me, and said he heard
good things about me. And then I got hired for part-time”.47
Another woman reported that her company made working part-time a possibility, but made it very unattractive: “Yeah, but they made it very unattractive. Because... the targets are nearly the same. It’s a very target-driven company. Plus, you have to pay more for your car, for your phone or your laptop. It has some sort of rule that, in the end, what you have left is so much less than... it’s not very attractive”48. Another mentioned that her employer would feel obliged to give her a part-time contract if she asked, but only because they allowed it once before:
“I think they would have to because at some point they hired somebody from another department, from HR, and she was already working 4 days. She was the only person in
our sales team that worked 4 days. I guessed if I had told them I want to work 4 days too, they couldn’t...say no. But that would only be because of her, because before that it
was unthinkable.” 49
We observed the same reluctance when we talked to Human Resource managers: some said that it was possible, but with “compensating” in other hours:
“Part-time, yeah. For me it’s about four days, doing something in the evening, doing something on Saturday... I just trust persons that they will make their hours and get the
job done. Actually that’s my experience as well. I’ve got two kids. One is 6 months and the other one is 2 ½ and I feel completely comfortable going to work, getting in the car
46 Woman 3. Interview, 30 April 2018 47 Woman 6. Interview, 23 April 2018 48 Woman 7. Interview, 26 April 2018 49 Woman 4. Interview, 23 April 2018
at 9, driving back at 4, and doing something at home and go to daycare. That’s just excellent.”50
However, managers are usually very open about flex time:
“Well, I think part-time is quite difficult, but you have the accessibility to work whenever you want. For example, I have two kids and on Monday afternoon I’m in school at 3
o’clock. I don’t work between 3 and 6. It’s possible and everybody find it okay. Sometimes I do my hours in the evening, or somewhere or sometimes not, it’s not necessary. So it’s more flexible. And one week you have to work 60 hours but the other
week it’s just normal and it’s 35.”51
Regarding flexible working hours, most women interviewed said it was possibility to some extent, but usually limited by the fact that clients that they met worked from 9am to 5pm: “it’s flexible because I can work at home, or I can arrange my appointments. Like, in the morning or the afternoons. But my clients are also working between 9 and 5. So, you have to have it between that”52. The lady who worked in a store as a shop manager was the only one who did not have any sort of flexibility, working every day from 7 to 5.
Only one woman interviewed worked part-time, at a recruitment agency. Her motivation was linked to her children, and she said that she would work full-time next year when they will be old enough: “Because they will go to secondary school and they will be more busy with school and they will have normal days at school, so I will have the opportunity to work full-time”53. This one tends to fit the stereotypical model of the “mother years part-time pause” in her career.
Those findings are leaning on the pessimist side. On one hand, the sales job offers a lot of flexibility, because salespeople are usually free to manage their own agendas. Some
50 HR manager 1. Interview, 29 March 2018 51 HR manager 2. Interview, 29 March 2018 52 Woman 5. Interview, 30 April 2018 53 Woman 11. Interview, 16 May 2018
women take advantage of that. However, most of them report that their freedom is curbed by the fact that their clients work from 9 to 5, and the have to schedule meetings during that time. Most importantly, their employers seem reluctant to let them go on part-time contract.
Those results tend to support the pessimist vision: employers are not very willing to let salespeople work part-time, even though it is possible (as shown by the case of one of our responses who worked thirty-two hours). Discriminations can sometimes be even more extreme: during one of the interviews, a woman revealed that she was fired because of her pregnancy: “The company I was working for, 10 years ago, they said “You are pregnant now, then you will not have the same passion you always had in your work”. So I went searching for another job.”54
However, there are perhaps signs that it is changing: all women said that, if they were ready to negotiate, it would probably be possible to work part-time. This is an encouraging sign that if enough women enter the male-dominated professions and put pressure on employers to allow them to work part-time, they can perhaps change the corporate culture. However, it will certainly be a very slow process: many women said that, even though they could, they would not pressure their employer for a part-time contract, probably out of fear they will displease their hierarchy. What is more, there probably is a self-selecting process at the entrance of sales professions that leads to saleswomen being less keen on working part-time, so also less willing to pressure their employers for it. As for the woman who was fired when she told her company about her wish to have children, she very quickly found another company that accepted her wish for maternity: ““I’m still the same person, even though I have two children. Here, they understand.”
4.2 Checking employee’s motivations
Most of the women interviewed loved their jobs and had developed a strong identity around it. However, many women also reported that they found their job incompatible with part-time work, something that is in contradiction with the fact that one of the women interviewed and 21% of the women surveyed do work part-time.
54Woman5, Op. Cit. p.35
