ABSTRACT
It is difficult to make sense of women’s employment without specific consideration of women’s greater propensity to work part-time when compared with men. Part-time employment is increasingly referred to as flexible or ‘atypical’ working. Over the past 20 years, alongside women’s increasing labour market participation, atypical employment has increased in most OECD countries (Rasmussen et al. 2004). Within the European Union part-time work is the dominant form of flexible work and is particularly widespread in areas of employment where women are concentrated (Fagan and Burchell 2002). It is therefore an important aspect of gender segregation in employment.
