UNIVERSAL DISADVANTAGE?

ABSTRACT

Working fewer than full-time hours has been seen as a crucial way in which women workers can balance demands from home and paid work. But working part-time holds a range of negative repercussions for other aspects of worker's lives, in particular their economic well-being. Examining objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being, the paper uses data from the European Community Household Panel Survey to consider the ramifications of working short hours for women in Europe. The paper is concerned with the generalisability of the very weak situation of part-timers in Britain. It asks whether and how the economic problems faced by women at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy differ according to societal context. The papers shows that part-time low level workers had the lowest monthly wages relative to their compatriots in each country examined, though the intensity of wage disadvantage varied substantially across the sample. The research did not uncover a universal positive correlation between women's relative wage positions and individual level measures of economic well-being, however. The most prevalent association between working part-time in a low level occupation and facing a weak economic position occurred at the level of household economies. The paper concludes by asking how we best research economic well-being, including whether it should be approached via an individual or household level analysis.

Keywords:

• economic well-being
• part-time work
• Europe
• work-life balance

Acknowledgements

This research was co-funded by a grant of the European Commission under the Transnational Access to major Research Infrastructures contract HPRI-CT-2001-00128 hosted by IRISS-C/I at CEPS/INSTEAD Differdange (Luxembourg), and by the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. The author is very grateful for the support from the team in Differdange. Thanks also to the very useful suggestions made by the journal's editor and referees.

Notes

¹In Greece, clerical workers were lower waged than manual. In the other countries, the manual workers were the lowest waged.

²The national minimum wage rate was first introduced in Ireland in April 2000, when it was set at £4.40 ([euro]5.59) per hour. There have been five increases since then (up to July 2007)(EIRO 2007).