The Netherlands stands out in the OECD for the large share of workers who work part-time hours. While the Netherlands has made important strides in ensuring that part-time work is of good quality, relative to other OECD countries, it still needs to tackle a major challenge in its part-time workforce: that part-time jobs are disproportionately held by women, with negative consequences for gender equality in the labour force and at home. Section 2 overviews part-time work in the Netherlands, looks at who in the household typically works part-time (mothers), and explores Dutch workers’ rationales for working part-time. It also takes a closer look at two sectors whose workers are disproportionately female and disproportionately work part-time: teachers and care providers.
High numbers of women in part-time work does help increase the overall female labour force participation rate. The Netherlands does well on this measure of the total share of women working in the labour market. Cross-nationally, the alternative is often not women in full-time work, but rather women opting out of the workforce entirely.
In countries where part-time work is less common, women sometimes leave the labour market completely after becoming mothers. In the United States, for example, part-time work is often of poor quality, for low pay, and comes with little social security or fiscal support (Wielers and Raven, 2013[12]). This, combined with relatively weak childcare supports for infant and pre-primary age children (OECD, 2017[13]) (Adema, Clarke and Frey, 2016[14]), leads to a dropout of women from the workforce after having children.
Any discussion of moving women into full-time work should note that part-time work is, of course, better for women’s economic self-sufficiency than complete labour market withdrawal. Also, aside from the economic implications, many Dutch people say they are satisfied working part-time hours (Portegijs et al., 2018[10]) and the Netherlands scores highly on the OECD “Better Life Index.” The Netherlands has relatively low rates of long work hours and a relatively high degree of satisfaction with life. When asked to rate their general life satisfaction on a scale from zero to ten, Dutch people gave, on average, a grade of 7.4 – higher than the OECD average of 6.5 (OECD, 2017[15]).