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.     

Les groupements d'employeurs : la sécurité dans la flexibilité ?

An employer pool is an association that, formed under a French act of 1901, hires wage-earners who share their time between two or even three employers who are members of the association. The objectives of these pools are: to turn contingent or part-time jobs into steady, full-time occupations covered by permanent employment contracts; and to make the employer's need for economic flexibility compatible with the individual's need for security. The results of a survey conducted in two employer pools are used to examine actual practices by inquiring into the meaning of a "shared worktime" for wage-earners and by observing the various uses that these employers make of this work force and the new social forms that thus arise. Employees' intermittent presence in the firms and the triangular features of their employment relationship lead to socially distributed sets of constraints and resources, as well as a stronger individualization of work relations.     

Les « intermittents » de l'Église. Modalités d'emploi des personnels laïcs dans le catholicisme français

Given the shortage of priests, bishops have assigned permanent religious duties to several thousand laypersons, a majority of them women. Many of these persons have employment contracts. The employment conditions of this new type of permanent personnel tend to be unfavorable: assignments for a few years despite contracts of unlimited duration, part-time work and a nearly minimum wage. Various factors account for this fragility: the dire financial straits of French dioceses; ecclesiastical authorities, determination to present the clergy as the only fully legitimate, permanent personnel in the Church; and the attitude of laypersons who seem to be satisfied with their lot. The efforts to institutionalize this work have encountered difficulties with respect to both the labor code and the unexpected effects produced internally by the advocacy of a “culture of limited duration commitment”.     

Jobs for Mothers: Married Women's Labor Force Reentry and Part-Time,Temporary Employment in Japan

This paper explains the increase in middle-aged women reentering the labor force in Japan and their concentration in part-time or temporary employment. Existing explanations attribute women's concentration in part-time employment too narrowly to supply or demand factors. In Japan, both the labor supply of middle-aged women and the demand for part-time workers have increased, but these conditions channel middle-aged women into part-time or temporary employment only when systematic barriers obstruct their access to full-time jobs. Because it plays an important role in women's employment decisions, the rigidity of standard, full-time employment needs greater attention in studies of nonstandard, atypical types of work.     

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.     

Swedish fathers choosing part-time work

In Sweden, both parents have a legal right to reduce their working hours to 30 hours per week. Quantitative analysis of 20,000 Swedish parents with children aged between 2 and 7, however, shows mothers to be 14 times more likely to work part time than fathers. Gender imbalance in parents’ part-time employment is thus even more pronounced than in their parental leave take-up, at least in Sweden. An analysis of 14 in-depth interviews with Swedish fathers who have chosen parental part-time work reveals that part-time work represents for them a way to reconcile their separate identities as professionals and as involved fathers. Nevertheless, this study revealed that certain difficulties of a more structural nature complicated this solution for these men; these issues included, in the first place, a strong full-time norm prevailing in male-dominated workplaces, and traditional ideals of masculinity centred on men's breadwinning role. Furthermore, ideals of gender equality and involved fatherhood also showed themselves as having an impact, enabling new masculine positions for part-time working fathers to emerge.     

Bien-être et souffrance en élevage : conditions de vie au travail des personnes et des animaux

Starting in the 1980s in France, the scientific problems related to the well-being of animals reduced a complicated social critique of industrial systems for raising livestock to a matter of adapting animals to the living conditions imposed by these systems. This swept out of view questions about the working conditions for farmers and wage-earners. However people and animals tend to share living conditions in these systems, conditions that cause suffering. Given the intensified pace of work, as people tend an ever larger number of animals, and the mounting pressure on both people and livestock, affects are repressed, and communication breaks down. Relations to one's self and to others are altered, and the relation to death is “pathologized” at the workplace - thus providing further evidence of a failed relation to life and to others in animal husbandry. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

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.     

Working Hours Flexibility and Timing of Retirement: Findings from Europe

This study investigates how flexibility in working hours affects retirement timing. It tests the assumption that decreasing weekly working hours delays retirement and extends working life. Using data from four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we analyze whether a shift from full-time to part-time work delays retirement. Results show that older workers who reduce their working hours retire earlier than those who stay in full-time employment. The effect is stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in Scandinavian countries. No interaction effects for gender and work strain are found. We conclude that part-time work at the end of the career, as a means to extend working life, should be reevaluated.     

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.     

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.     

Le temps de l'activité de la caissière : entre logique productive et logique de service

At first sight, the worktime put in by cashiers at checkout counters seems homogeneous, continuous and repetitive. An empirical study of hypermarket cashiers in France shows, on the contrary, that the time spent working is relatively discontinuous and diversified. It is similar to the time on the job put in by semiskilled workers in industry. What characterizes cashiers' work is their having to manage flows of both products and customers. Their worktime can, therefore, be understood as a compromise that comes out of balancing productivity with human relations, a compromise that sometimes causes conflict. By acquiring an “incorporated know-how”, cashiers manage to fill their assignment.     

Breastfeeding and employment: A propensity score matching approach

ABSTRACT

It is well established within the scholarship on work and the family that many women experience difficulty juggling work and family responsibilities. Challenges to breastfeeding after giving birth are a specific manifestation of this work–family conflict. Many women report that they are unable to continue breastfeeding upon return to paid work. In this article, I analyze a subsample of 746 women from the United States Infant Feeding Practices Survey II to assess the effect of new mothers’ employment status and workplace characteristics on breastfeeding duration. This research reveals that new mothers who return to paid employment within three months of giving birth breastfeed an average of five fewer weeks than new mothers who do not return to paid work for three months or more. In addition, among mothers who return to paid work within three months, full-time workers breastfeed an average of more than 15 fewer weeks than part-time workers. These substantial differences in the duration of breastfeeding suggest that women face significant obstacles to combining paid work and mothering in the postpartum period.     

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.     

When does part-time work relate to less work-life conflict for parents? Moderating influences of workplace support and gender in the Netherlands,Sweden and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Working part-time can potentially be a great means of reducing work-life conflict for parents of young children. However, research has not univocally found this attenuating relation, suggesting it may not be universal, but rather contingent on other factors. This study investigates whether the relation between part-time work and work-life conflict is contingent on workplace support and gender. Results show that short part-time work (<25?h) relates to lower levels of work-life conflict for both women and men. We find some evidence that workplace support affects this relation: short part-time working women in an organization with a family supportive organizational culture had lower levels of work-life conflict than short part-time working women in organizations with an unsupportive organizational culture. For men working short part-time we find tendencies in the same direction, although this falls short of conventional statistical significance. In addition, long part-time work (25–35?h) is not significantly related to (lower) work-life conflict for either women or men. In line with previous research, managerial support is found to be linked to lower levels of work-life conflict, irrespective of whether one works full-time or part-time. Notably, the relation between working part-time and work-life conflict does not differ for mothers and fathers, suggesting that this work-family policy could help both men and women reduce work-life conflict.     

Public policy and part-time employment

VI. Conclusions What are the policy implications of these findings? One thing is clear: Recently employers have avoided hiring full-time employees. With the dramatic slowing in the growth of full-time jobs has come a rise in the relative importance of part-time employment, particularly of the involuntary kind. The root cause of this phenomenon is suggested by the history of the past two decades, which contain periods of both extremely weak and very strong full-time job growth. The pattern is obvious: When there is strong full-time job growth, involuntary part-time work fades in importance. One other pattern is also evident: The periods of relatively weak full-time job growth and increasing importance of involuntary part-time employment are also times of growth in levels of income taxation and the volume of governmental regulation. By contrast, the period of very pronounced growth in full-time employment and reduced incidence of involuntary part-time work is characterized by lowered income tax rates and the relaxing of governmental regulations. From the policy standpoint, it appears that if involuntary part-time work is a problem, the most direct way to deal with it is to return to the economic policies of the 1981–1989 era that generated such remarkable overall job growth in the American economy.     

‘Men have careers,women have babies’: unequal parental care among Irish entrepreneurs

This paper examines how entrepreneurial parents in Ireland negotiate their work and family roles, drawing upon a national survey of women and men entrepreneurs, to ascertain the degree to which entrepreneurship facilitates a more equitable sharing of domestic and caring tasks. Relatively few studies have examined familial and domestic task allocation in the context of entrepreneurship, as opposed to employment. The results suggest that mothers (and not fathers) adopted flexible working strategies; took on a disproportionate responsibility for caring and domestic labour; and experienced greater role conflict. Far from contradicting the prevailing findings of gender and employment issues, the study validates the gendered patterns of divergence between men and women and illustrates how they extend into entrepreneurship. Fathers worked significantly longer hours; their career trajectories were typically continuous, in full-time work, while mothers had more fragmented working patterns, reflecting absences for caring and adjustments such as part-time or working from home. It is still mothers, rather than fathers, who feel responsible for childcare arrangements and this imposes time constraints on their pursuit of entrepreneurship. The study points to the need for policy interventions to encourage entrepreneurship alongside co-parenting through childcare provision/subsidies and equal treatment in access to family-related leave.     

Beyond the Mommy Track: The Influence of New-Concept Part-Time Work for Professional Women on Work and Family

This study investigates how the option for new-concept part-time work influences the ability of mothers of preschool children working in professional occupations to successfully integrate work and family responsibilities while maintaining career opportunities. Data are from a subset of the 1996 IBM Work and Life Issues Survey in the United States (n = 687). Compared to their counterparts who worked full time, mothers who worked in these part-time positions reported significantly greater work-family balance and did not report significantly less career opportunity. The part-time group reported 47% fewer work hours and 41% lower income than the full-time group. These data support the notion that new-concept part-time work is a viable option to assist women in professional careers to successfully integrate their family career. Implications of these findings are presented.     

Women,work, and family in the Czech Republic—and comparisons with the West

What are the work-family experiences of Czech women, and to what extent are there similarities and differences with women in the West? Drawing on a cross-national survey and other findings, this paper points out that unlike the extensive part-time employment of many Western European women, most Czech women in the post-Communist era have continued to combine full-time employment with family roles. Maternity and parental leaves, kindergartens, and other policies have been important supports. It is argued that employment and economic independence remain important to Czech women, and although gender differentiation in women's domestic activities and men's preponderance in upper-level jobs in the economy and government is recognized, Western attributions of patriarchy have been resisted. Since family life is highly valued, many have seen women as advantaged in their greater family involvement and integration of both family and employment roles. Rather than opposition between men and women, Czechs generally point to partnership and overall social equality. During Communism Czechs learned that ‘time at work’ does not equal productivity, and women practiced an informal flextime to aid work-family integration. This ‘self-management’ of work time and of work and family activities is cited as a component of Czech women‘s sense of efficacy and gender equality. An interesting question for the post-Communist success of Czech women and work organizations is whether women's interest in self-management will be met by the support of managers and of workplace cultures and structures.     

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.