Ungrateful slaves? An examination of job quality and job satisfaction for male part-time workers in the UK

Research on part-time work has concentrated over many decades on the experiences of women but male part-time employment is growing in the UK. This article addresses two sizable gaps in knowledge concerning male part-timers: are men's part-time jobs of lower quality than men's full-time jobs? Are male part-timers more or less job-satisfied compared to their full-time peers? A fundamental part of both interrogations is whether men's part-time employment varies by occupational class. The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part-timers. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the “grateful slave” debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low-quality part-time jobs. Innovatively, this article draws upon those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part-time employment. Based upon analysis of a large quantitative data set, the results provide clear evidence of low-quality male part-time employment in the UK, when compared with men's full-time jobs. Men working part-time also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs. Male part-timers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear “lead” both in bad job quality and low satisfaction. The article asks whether decreasingly satisfied male part-time workers should be termed “ungrateful slaves?” It unpacks the “grateful slave” metaphor and, after doing so, rejects its value for the ongoing analysis of part-time jobs in the formal labor market.     

Temporary Help Firms as Entrepreneurial Actors

Competing explanations of growth in the temporary help supply (THS) industry stress its role in meeting the needs and desires of workers vs. those of employers. Until now, less attention has been paid the growth agenda of the THS industry itself. Yet evidence from a study of THS firms in Wisconsin suggests that their entrepreneurial efforts may be an important, overlooked factor driving the industry's expansion. This paper examines the growth and geographic dispersal of Wisconsin's THS firms through a theoretical framework of entrepreneurial action. Data from in-depth interviews with their owners and managers reveal strenuous efforts to create new markets for THS services. THS firms' highly proactive stance is reflected in their decisions about where to locate, efforts to become part of local social networks, and innovative approaches to product development and marketing. Previous studies have implied that THS firms opportunistically and reactively respond to changes in labor supply or demand factors. This study finds THS firms actively promoting their own growth, intervening in labor markets to forge a role for themselves as employment intermediaries and gatekeepers to permanent jobs.     

Le temps du remue-ménage. Conditions d'emploi et de travail de femmes de chambre

It is now admitted that part-time work is a signal of inequality between the sexes, in both work and family. By focusing on cleavages among women, an analysis is made of how worktime and the company’s position as a subcontractor combine so as to produce inequality among wage-earners by assigning them heterogeneous statuses and thus forcing some of them to cope with precarious working, employment and living conditions. This study of the working and employment conditions of chamber maids in France focuses on those who work part or full-time in cleaning companies under contract with other firms. Inside this rather unskilled group of women, part-time work stresses the differences produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequality between stable, full-time employees and the women subcontracted at part-time who do the same job. These cleavages set off a strike among these part-time workers. Analyzing this labor dispute has shed light on the social relations running through the firm and on invisible issues in work and employment for these women with jobs in the shadows.     

Married Women’s Labor Supply and Spousal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Results from Panel Data

This paper investigates the effect of spousal insurance coverage on married women’s labor supply. This effect was hypothesized to be negative, since married women have an incentive to seek employment in jobs that will provide insurance when their husbands do not provide coverage. Panel data from the 1996–2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys was used to control for the potential correlation between unobserved characteristics and spousal insurance. The findings suggest that spousal coverage does have a negative effect on married women’s labor supply, and that most of the reduction in labor supply seems to derive from shifts out of the labor force rather than between part-time and full-time work.

Labor Market Penalties for Mothers in Italy

We use a large Italian employer-employee matched dataset to study how motherhood affects women’s working career in terms of labor force participation and wages. We confirm that the probability of exiting employment significantly increases for mothers of pre-school children; however, this is mitigated by higher job quality, human capital endowment and childcare accessibility. Most importantly, the availability of part-time jobs reduces their probability of moving out of the labor force. Women not leaving employment after becoming mothers experience lower wages than women with no pre-school child, and there are no signs of this gap closing 5 years after childbirth. Contrary to previous literature, the wage gap penalty emerges only among women working full-time, thanks to the high protection accorded to part-time jobs in Italy.     

Working part‐time: achieving a successful ‘work‐life’ balance?1

The role of part-time employment in the balancing of women's employment and family lives has generated an immense literature. Using data on women working part-time and full-time in different level occupations in the British Household Panel Survey, this paper argues that it is now vital to move these balancing debates on from their location within work-family rhetoric and to re-position the study of women's working time in broader work-life discussions. Work-family debates tend to neglect a number of key domains that women balance in their lives, in addition to family and employment, including their financial security and their leisure. The paper shows that examining the financial situations and the leisure lives of female part-timers in lower level jobs reveals a less positive picture of their 'life balancing' than is portrayed in much work-family literature. Instead, they emerged as the least financially secure employees and, linked to this, less satisfied with their social lives too. It is concluded that since the work-life system is multi- and not just two-dimensional, it is important to examine how all life domains interrelate with each other. In this way, we would be in a better position to begin to assess all the benefits and disadvantages associated with working part-time and with other work-life balancing strategies.     

Asian Women,Job Training and the Social Organization of Immigrant Labor Markets

This paper examines the entry of Asian immigrant women into a gendered labor market via government-funded job training programs. The focus is on the intake processing of clients into an employment training program operated by a community based organization. The study reveals that women's family responsibilities and the cultural capital they bring function to screen them into or out of training programs and ultimately shape their location in the workforce. The study thus draws attention to how race, class, and gender enter into the organization of Asian immigrant women into the labor market. This investigation is based in institutional ethnography (Smith 1987), a research strategy which displays how activities in a particular setting are coordinated with more extended forms of social organization. The study shows that the overriding concern with successful placement in a job as mandated by government regulations is a critical factor in selecting the women for these programs.     

Consequences of Partner Incarceration for Women's Employment

Research has documented the limited opportunities men have to earn income while in prison and the barriers to securing employment and decent wages upon release. However, little research has considered the relationship between men's incarceration and the employment of the women in their lives. Economic theory suggests that family members of incarcerated individuals may attempt to smooth income fluctuation resulting from incarceration by increasing their labor supply. This study used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,780) to investigate how men's incarceration is associated with the number of hours their female partners work as well as variation in this association. Results showed that, on average, women's hours of work were not significantly impacted by the incarceration of their partners. However, there was a positive relationship between partner incarceration and employment among more advantaged groups of women (e.g., married women, White women).     

Employment Behaviors of Mothers Who have a Child with Asthma

The effects of having a child with asthma on the employment status and the continuity of full-time employment of mothers were investigated using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Mothers who had a child with asthma were less likely to be employed full-time or part-time, and if single, they were less likely to retain their full-time jobs than other mothers. The effects of having a child with asthma depended on the marital status of the mother and the well-being of the child. Employment behaviors of single mothers were affected more than those of married mothers. The bed days of children reduced the prevalence and continuation of full-time employment for single and married mothers.     

Finding Hope in the Life of Young Part-timers

The objective of this article is to link the structural factor (employment structure) and subjective factor (notion of labor) concerned with the generation process of young part-timers (freeters) by considering their life histories in terms of hope. Based on the ongoing research conducted over a period of 5 years on three male freeters, the following facts have come to light. Freeters are located on the lower strata of full-time and part-time jobs. They cannot envision a future career path in either employment style. Due to current labor ethics, they cannot form a subgroup that acknowledges their employment style and present-time orientation. Under pressure from labor ethics, which insist that they do “decent” work, they cannot help but hope to escape from this double-bind. To put it briefly, present Japanese society needs flexible workers, on the one hand, but cannot permit them to be flexible on the other. This kind of structural tension drives the young workers to hope. But hope does not dissolve the structural tension. On the contrary, it works to prolong this structural tension itself.     

LABOR CONTRACTS AND FLEXIBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM A LABOR MARKET REFORM IN SPAIN

This paper evaluates the effects of a labor market reform in Spain that removed restrictions on fixed‐term or temporary contracts. Our empirical results are based on longitudinal firm‐level data that cover observations before and after the reform. We posit and estimate a dynamic labor demand model with indefinite and fixed‐term labor contracts, and a general structure of labor adjustment costs. Experiments using the estimated model show important positive effects of the reform on total employment (i.e., a 3.5% increase) and job turnover. There is a strong substitution of permanent by temporary workers (i.e., a 10% decline in permanent employment). The effects on labor productivity and the value of firms are very small. In contrast, a counterfactual reform that halved all firing costs would produce the same employment increase as the actual reform, but much larger improvements in productivity and in the value of firms. (JEL J23, J32, J41)     

Informal Caregiving at Working Age: Effects of Job Characteristics and Family Configuration

This article addresses the relationship between employment and providing informal care for sick, disabled, or elderly people in Great Britain. Hazard rate models for taking up caring and leaving work when caring are estimated using retrospective family, employment, and caring data from the British Family and Working Lives Survey 1994 – 1995 for 9,139 British men and women. Family roles but not employment characteristics were relevant for men and women taking up caring. Being in a lower social class was, however, an important predictor of female carers leaving the labor market. Starting caring and quitting the labor market were not affected by women working part time, nor by most aspects of job flexibility that were considered.     

Why Third World urban employers usually prefer men

Males outnumber female employees by 3 to 1 in the modern sector of developing countries; moreover, women tend to be concentrated in a limited number of occupations. This underrepresentation of women in employment in Third World countries is generally attributed to the restricted supply of qualified women willing and able to work away from home in modern sector occupations. However, this approach pays insufficient attention to the demand for labor and the recruitment policy of employers. Employer concerns and perceptions that limit the overall demand for women workers and thereby reduce their employment opportunities include the need for pregnancy and maternity leave and protection, absenteeism, turnover, and cultural restrictions. Among the factors that contribute to the sexual segmentation of the labor market are protective legislation that excludes women from certain sectors of the labor market, sex-typing of jobs, and employer perceptions that women lack muscular strength, are not effective supervisors, and cannot work well with men. At the same time, women are preferred for certain jobs because of their greater docility, acceptance of lower wages, household-type skills, and sex appeal. The general factor limiting employment opportunities for women is the employer's perception that women are more costly and less productive than male employees. This perception is directly related to women's role in childbearing and rearing, and is reinforced by legislation that places the costs of maternity leave, nursing breaks, and child care directly on the employer. Thus, women's childbearing and family responsibilities not only limit their availability for work but also discourage employers from hiring them.     

Labor Force Transitions after Childbirth Among Five Birth Cohorts in Sweden

This article describes part-time work in Sweden and performs a multivariate analysis of the choice between part-time work, full-time work, and other activities in connection with childbirth among five birth cohorts of women. Results show that the combination of market work and family is common, but heterogeneity exists among women in the sample analyzed. Previous labor force participation proves important when it comes to returning to the labor market. The extent of previous labor force participation is also important, regardless of sector of, when it comes to the return to part-time or full-time work. Career orientation and social background also prove significant, some indicators probably working indirectly through higher education and different preferences.     

BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS WITH THE DIVISION OF PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT

In the mainstream real business cycle (RBC) model, labor can be viewed as temporary employment since the firm's demand for labor behaves directly in response to stochastic productivity shocks in each period. This paper provides a tractable way of analyzing fluctuations in permanent and temporary employment over the business cycle, as well as the underlying driving forces. This inclusion of heterogeneity helps reconcile the RBC model with the U.S. data given that temporary employees in general only account for a small proportion of total private‐sector employment (about 2%–3%). We draw an explicit division between permanent and temporary employment and resort to this separation to account for stylized facts that characterize a two‐tier labor market. In particular, with regard to the U.S. labor market, our benchmark model can well explain the motivating facts: (1) temporary employment is much more volatile than permanent employment, (2) the share of temporary employment (the ratio of temporary to aggregate employment) exhibits strong pro‐cyclicality, (3) permanent employment lags by two quarters on average, and (4) the correlation between temporary employment and output is stronger than that involving the permanent counterpart. The quantitative analysis suggests that our proposed channels explain the main facts well and the model further provides plausible reasoning for a firm's labor hoarding. (JEL E24, E32)     

Women’s Employment Status,Coercive Control,and Intimate Partner Violence in Mexico

Findings from previous studies examining the relation between women’s employment and the risk of intimate partner violence have been mixed. Some studies find greater violence toward women who are employed, whereas others find the opposite relation or no relation at all. I propose a new framework in which a woman’s employment status and her risk of violent victimization are both influenced by the level of control exercised by her partner. Controlling men will actively prevent women from working and are also more likely to physically harm their partners. Using a statistical model in which the effect of omitted characteristics on women’s employment and their risk of violence are allowed to be correlated reverses the estimated association between employment and violence. The final results show that employment reduces women’s risk of violence. Data for the study are drawn from a sample of over 30,000 Mexican women in intimate relationships. The findings have broad implications given the increase in female labor force participation in many parts of the world.     

Cleaning time,protest time: employment and working conditions for hotel maids

It is now admitted that part-time work emphasizes the inequalities between the sexes in both spheres of work and family, but this article rather focuses on the cleavages among women themselves. An analysis is provided of how working time and the company's position combine so as to produce inequalities among female wage-earners, assigning them heterogeneous statuses, thus exposing some of them to precarious employment, working and living conditions. The study concentrates on chambermaids working part-time and full-time in the French subcontracting context of cleaning companies. Part-time work stresses and confirms the differentiations produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequalities within this group of female workers who yet do the same tasks. These cleavages have set off strikes, and the analysis of this labor dispute sheds light on some social relations running through the firm, as well as the invisible concerns for the employment and work of these women working behind the scenes.     

Full-time, part-time employment and life satisfaction of the elderly

There is continued interest in employment and subjective well-being among the elderly because of the increasing proportion of elderly population in the labor force. This study investigates the association between part-time and full-time employment and life satisfaction of the elderly in Taiwan. We also examine how these associations may differ across socio-demographic groups. An ordinal treatment effect model is developed to accommodate the discrete feature of the employment decision and the potential endogeneity of these two outcomes. Using a unique sample of the elderly in Taiwan, in contrast to findings for the general population of the previous studies, we find that part-time employment is significant and positively associated with life satisfaction, while elderly with full-time employment have lower life satisfaction. These results are robust across socio-demographic groups.     

Family-friendly benefits and full-time working mothers’ labor force persistence

Family-friendly benefits are intended to help mothers balance rather than juggle work and family. Prior research assumes that family-friendly benefits have a similar effect on mothers’ persistence in full-time work across parity. However, there is evidence that the transitions to first-time and second-time motherhood are qualitatively, as well as quantitatively, different experiences. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we investigate women’s labor force status (full-time, part-time, and not working) after both parity transitions among women who were working in the labor force full-time prior to the birth of their first child. We find that mothers often persist in the same labor force status after the birth of their second child that they held after the birth of their first child, but there is wide variability in labor force and parity pathways. In addition, a wider array of family-friendly benefits is associated with second-time mothers’ full-time work than first-time mothers.     

Maternal labor market return and domestic work after childbirth in Britain and Germany

This study investigates how the duration of maternal labor market interruptions and mothers' employment status after return relate to the division of domestic work in couples after childbirth in West Germany, East Germany, and Britain. It extends the literature by considering how these two aspects of postnatal labor market return decisions of mothers may give rise to or counteract growing gender inequality in domestic work afterbirth events. Using data on 826 British and 1614 German new parent couples based on the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) (1991–2008) and on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (1990–2010), I apply fixed-effects panel models. Mothers perform more housework with increasing length of their employment interruptions across the three contexts. For childcare, longer time-outs increase mothers' childcare share in West Germany but not in East Germany. This result is in line with institutional variations in day-care provision. Across contexts, mothers' full-time returns are associated with a larger reduction in their domestic work share than short time-out. After mothers returned to part-time employment, couples show no or much weaker compensating behaviors for longer previous maternal time-outs than after a full-time return.