ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the role of part-time work in shaping mothers’ employment patterns. It assesses the penalties and potential integration or exclusion of part-timers in relation to patterns of segregation and employment conditions in each of the three countries. Part-time work provides an important means for women to combine paid and unpaid work in the Netherlands, the UK and the former West Germany, and is likely to remain so in the absence of a widespread extension of childcare services. In our three countries the “breadwinner” contract has remained largely intact to date, although there is some differentiation emerging with a “dual full-time” pattern becoming increasingly common in couples across Europe where the woman is highly educated. The chapter concludes by arguing that different regulatory systems, national working-time debates and associated policy interventions have had an important influence on the quality of part-time work which has developed in each society.
