Good, Bad and Very Bad Part-time Jobs for Women? Re-examining the Importance of Occupational Class for Job Quality since the ‘Great Recession’ in Britain

Abstract

Clare (2018) Good, bad and very bad part-time jobs for women? Reexamining the importance of occupational class for job quality since the 'great recession' in Britain. Work, Employment and Society.

Part-time employment and the gender gap in low pay for UK employees: what changed over the period 1996–2016?

“…Contributing to this literature, this article estimates the contribution of part-time employment to the gender gap in low pay. This focus is motivated by an awareness that part-time employment is a classed as well as gendered phenomenon, disproportionately undertaken by women from lower socioeconomic groups (Warren, 2003;Warren & Lyonette, 2018). Differences in full-time and part-time employment may, therefore, be particularly important in accounting for gender inequality at the lower end of the earnings distribution.…”

“…It remains rare for men to work part time in the middle of working life, as is common for women (Fagan & Walthery, 2014), or for this to be associated with the transition to parenthood (Dias et al, 2018) or other caring responsibilities. Discounting modest fluctuations in the share of part-time employment for women, female part-time employment has remained high since the phenomenon first became commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s (Warren & Lyonette, 2018).…”

Ungrateful slaves? An examination of job quality and job satisfaction for male part‐time workers in the UK

“…Women have long dominated the extensive part‐time labor market in the UK. Given the substantially higher number of female than male part‐timers, debates around part‐time employment are justifiably dominated by women's experiences (Ellingsaeter & Jensen, ; Nicolaisen, Kavli, & Jensen, ; O'Reilly & Fagan, ; Tomlinson & Durbin, ; Warren & Lyonette, , ). Nevertheless, the proportion of men working part‐time has grown, boosted by post‐recessionary labor market developments.…”

“…An underlying theme in both questions concerns the extent to which occupational class is an important factor in understanding male part‐time employment, in the same way that it has been shown to affect women's work‐time. Occupational class is a strong signifier of differences among female part‐timers in how and why they work part‐time, and the conditions of their jobs (Warren & Lyonette, ). Furthermore, many of the economic changes impacting men's working lives (e.g., the loss of secure full‐time jobs in traditionally male‐dominated industries) are known to be structured along class lines (Walker & Roberts, ).…”

“…Specifically, the approach of the article references the twin themes of job quality and job satisfaction that, together, underpin the highly contentious positioning of female part‐time workers as potential “grateful slaves.” The “grateful slave” tag first appeared in the sociology of women's employment in the 1990s amid a juxtaposition of the objective quality of women's part‐time jobs with part‐timers' satisfaction with those jobs. Female part‐timers in the UK were, and are still (Warren & Lyonette, ), known to be overconcentrated‐in objectively poor jobs, marked by low hourly wages and limited opportunities for advancement. Nevertheless, the women employed in these jobs often interpret them positively, resulting in contentious disparities in how researchers analyze this apparent paradox.…”