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...
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| Format: | Working paper |
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University of Oxford
2005
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| _version_ | 1797060527637135360 |
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| author | Gregory, M Connolly, S |
| author_facet | Gregory, M Connolly, S |
| author_sort | Gregory, M |
| 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 | 2024-03-06T20:18:24Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:2cf2b7c1-d8ea-45f4-a035-b56beaf26c54 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:18:24Z |
| publishDate | 2005 |
| publisher | University of Oxford |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:2cf2b7c1-d8ea-45f4-a035-b56beaf26c542022-03-26T12:39:56ZPart-time work : a trap for women's careers? An analysis of the roles of heterogeneity and state dependenceWorking paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:2cf2b7c1-d8ea-45f4-a035-b56beaf26c54Symplectic ElementsBulk import via SwordUniversity of Oxford2005Gregory, MConnolly, SPart-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 | Gregory, M Connolly, S 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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