Women more likely to work part time from graduation

Women are more likely to work part-time than men from the moment they graduate, and the difference only increases from there, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Wednesday. Women with full-time jobs are more likely to switch to part-time than men, especially if they live with their partner and even more so after the arrival of a child.

CBS looked at the first nine years in the labor market of people who graduated between 2007 and 2009. It found that men and women were about equally likely to have paid work one year after graduation, but men were more likely to start their careers with full-time jobs. Women were twice as likely to work part-time than men, 30 and 14 percent, respectively.

That difference became even greater in the following years because men became less likely to work part-time and women more. Nine years after graduation, 10 percent of men worked part-time. Among women, 40 percent of university graduates worked part-time nine years after graduation, and a massive 67 percent of MBO graduates.

“The differences in part-time work are partly due to women being more likely to follow studies that prepare for work in sectors where part-time jobs are common, like education or healthcare,” CBS said. “But even if this is considered, women were less likely to have a full-time job than men one year after completing their education. Women move from full-time to part-time more often than men, even without children.”

Last month, the government launched a campaign to encourage women to work more hours and men to take on more of the care tasks. Women working more hours can help solve the shortages in the labor market, the government thinks. There are staff shortages in many sectors of the Dutch labor market, but especially in sectors with many female workers, like education and healthcare.

But more time at work also means less time spent on informal care, care for children, and other domestic tasks. Writer and journalist Lynn Berger recently calculated that this unpaid work is worth 215 billion euros per year.