Dual tracks: part-time work in life-cycle employment for British women

Forty percent of working women in the UK work part-time; does part-time work support a woman’s labour market career or frustrate it? Cohort data on women’s labour market involvement to age 42 show highly varied pathways through full-time/part-time/non-employment. Part-time work can be part of two different pathways in women’s labour supply for persistent workers and marginal workers. A history of full-time work, even including part-time or non-employment spells, tends to lead back to full-time work, indicating that part-time work supports a career. However, part-time work combined with non-employment is a trap against the resumption of full-time work.