ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how working time trends have been shaped by the disruption of the 2008 Great Recession and its aftermath. Following the fi nancial crisis in 2008, austerity measures were introduced across Europe, which were geared towards government budget defi cit reduction through public expenditure cuts and increased taxation (Anderson and Minneman, 2014). These expenditure cuts fell primarily on the public sector and its welfare services. They impacted particularly harshly on the living standards of low-income households and women through budget cuts for welfare and public services which triggered job loss, pay cuts and increased job insecurity for the public sector workforce, at least 70% of which are women. These measures have also affected the delivery of services which are intended to improve quality of life and work-life balance (WLB), such as the infrastructure of childcare, schools, health and eldercare services. It has meant that households-normally women-have taken on more unpaid work to substitute for services which the state no longer provides or which they can no longer afford to purchase (Bettio, 2012, European Parliament, 2013).
