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We give a quantitative analysis of the nature of occupational change -based on the utilisation of skills -as women make the transition between full-time and part-time work. We show that one-quarter of women moving from full-to part-time work experience downgrading. Women remaining with their current employer are less vulnerable and the availability of part-time opportunities is far more important than the presence of a pre-school child in determining whether a woman moves to a lowerskilled occupation. These findings indicate a loss of economic efficiency through the underutilisation of the skills of many of the women who work part-time.Part-time work by women has been a major source of employment growth in the UK over the past 30 years, and around 40% of women now in work are in part-time jobs. Much of this growth reflects its increasing role as the route by which women combine continuing labour market participation with home and family responsibilities particularly during the childcare years. As is widely documented, part-time work in the UK is disproportionately concentrated in low reward, low status jobs (Manning and Petrongolo, 2008;Grimshaw and Rubery, 2001;Blossfeld and Hakim, 1997;Hakim, 1998). It can be argued that, in the context of women's work-family preferences, inferior conditions, notably lower pay, are not necessarily evidence of discrimination or disadvantage. Women may choose to accept lower labour market rewards in return for other benefits they perceive in part-time work, such as shorter hours or the timing of the work week. However, an insidious dimension of the growth of part-time work is the movement of women from ÔbetterÕ jobs into lower-skilled occupations where part-time opportunities are more readily available and they can find the flexibility in working hours that they seek. Moving to part-time jobs at a lower occupational level than if they were to continue in full-time work implies underutilisation of their actual and potential human capital -referred to in a recent report by the Equal Opportunities Commission (2005) as the Ôhidden brain drainÕ of women's part-time work. This hidden brain drain, where women working part-time are employed in jobs below their levels of education and qualifications, is clearly in conflict with national strategies of improving educational attainment and raising skills at the workplace. It poses significant issues of economic efficiency as well as gender equity.The Equal Opportunities Commission identified the Ôhidden brain drainÕ through two sets of questions in a qualitative survey. Respondents were asked first whether they had previously held jobs which involved more supervision or management of staff, or needed a higher level of qualifications or skills than were required in their current job, and then more broadly whether they were working in jobs which did not use their latent potential (Darton and Hurrell, 2005). In this article we focus on the first aspect:

This paper estimates the impact of unemployment on earnings following re-employment for a large and representative sample of British men, 1984±94. Unemployment incidence is found to have only a temporary effect, an average earnings setback of 10% on initial re-engagement largely eroding over two years. The effect of unemployment duration, by contrast, is permanent, a one-year spell adding a further penalty of 10 percentage points. These wage penalties are least for young men and the low paid ± those most at risk of unemployment ± and greatest for prime age and highly paid men.

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While the gender pay gap has been narrowing for women in full-time jobs the pay penalty for the 40% of women who work part-time has risen, reflecting the growing polarisation of part-time jobs in low-wage occupations. A further dimension is that women often experience downgrading from higher-skill full-time into lower-skill part-time occupations. As women reorganise their working lives around the presence of children their reported hours and job satisfaction are highest in part-time work, but life-satisfaction is scarcely affected by hours of work. This Feature explores these issues and their challenge for economic efficiency as well as gender equity.On gender equality recent years have brought much good news in Britain. As in most advanced economies, increasing numbers of girls and young women have been staying on in post-compulsory education, and proceeding to further and higher education. They are outperforming their male peers at all levels, from primary school to university, and their aspirations are high. Building on their educational attainment women's labour force attachment is strengthening. They are moving into an expanding range of occupations, achieving career success in many. The UK's long-established gender pay gap is narrowing significantly and a reverse gender pay gap should no longer be unthinkable.This success story, however, relates only to women working full-time. Six million women, around 40% of those in work, are in part-time employment. For them the pay gap has been widening steadily over a number of years; they now face a substantial pay penalty not only relative to men but also relative to women in full-time work. The principal reasons for this are becoming starkly clear. Part-time jobs are heavily polarised into low-paid occupations. As wage inequality has increased the relative wage position of these jobs has deteriorated further. The key legislative provisions against discrimination, requiring equal pay and equal treatment, are not structured to address inequalities arising from occupational segregation. Moreover, the formal proscription against differential outcomes does not prevent differences in grading and individualspecific salaries within occupations. 1 Women supplying limited numbers of hours are least likely to claim their legal entitlements.The occupational segregation of women working part-time cannot be simply dismissed as selection into low-paid jobs by those whose weaker human capital attributes will generate poor labour market rewards. With 40% of women working part-time and the strong educational attainment of younger women this explanation is already stretched. More tellingly, the direct evidence of panel data shows that many women working part-time in low-paid occupations are qualified for, and have previously held, higher level, better paid jobs. This occupational downgrading with the switch to parttime work has recently been characterised by the Equal Opportunities Commission as * Helpful comments from Alison Booth during the preparation of this Introduction are ackn...

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The largest group of beneficiaries from the introduction of the National Minimum Wage in the UK were women working part-time. A potential threat to these wage gains is a reduction in the working hours available, with parttime (flexible) jobs particularly vulnerable. This paper reports a range of difference-in-difference estimates using individual-level data from the New Earnings Survey and the British Household Panel Survey. No significant changes in hours worked by either full-or part-time women are found 1, 2 and 3 years after the NMW, and no change in the probabilities of remaining in full-or part-time work or transiting between the two.

The insertion of exogenous genetic cargo into insects using transposable elements is a powerful research tool with potential applications in meeting food security and public health challenges facing humanity. piggyBac is the transposable element most commonly utilized for insect germline transformation. The described efficiency of this process is variable in the published literature, and a comprehensive review of transformation efficiency in insects is lacking. This study compared and contrasted all available published data with a comprehensive data set provided by a biotechnology group specializing in insect transformation. Based on analysis of these data, with particular focus on the more complete observational data from the biotechnology group, we designed a decision tool to aid researchers' decision‐making when using piggyBac to transform insects by microinjection. A combination of statistical techniques was used to define appropriate summary statistics of piggyBac transformation efficiency by species and insect order. Publication bias was assessed by comparing the data sets. The bias was assessed using strategies co‐opted from the medical literature. The work culminated in building the Goldilocks decision tool, a Markov‐Chain Monte‐Carlo simulation operated via a graphical interface and providing guidance on best practice for those seeking to transform insects using piggyBac.