Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence.
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 maintainin...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working paper |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Economics (University of Oxford)
2005
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| _version_ | 1797059449328762880 |
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| author | Connolly, S Gregory, M |
| author_facet | Connolly, S Gregory, M |
| author_sort | Connolly, S |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:04:25Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:2872f0a5-71c6-49d1-9885-b08cdf3644d0 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:04:25Z |
| publishDate | 2005 |
| publisher | Department of Economics (University of Oxford) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:2872f0a5-71c6-49d1-9885-b08cdf3644d02022-03-26T12:12:51ZPart-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence.Working paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:2872f0a5-71c6-49d1-9885-b08cdf3644d0EnglishDepartment of Economics - ePrintsDepartment of Economics (University of Oxford)2005Connolly, SGregory, MPart-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. |
| spellingShingle | Connolly, S Gregory, M Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title | Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title_full | Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title_fullStr | Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title_short | Part-time work - a trap for women`s careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence. |
| title_sort | part time work a trap for women s careers an analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependence |
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