Why Dutch Women Prefer to Work Part-Time - Building Gender Balanced Business

• The Netherlands has the largest share of women working part-time of all OECD countries, and that percentage has been growing, thanks to tax policy that has led more women to work fewer hours.

• For decades and across generations, some 4 in 10 Dutch men and women both tell researchers that families would suffer if more women worked full-time.

• The largest number of female part-time workers are young mothers, but the prevalence and preference is common in all categories of Dutch women.

• And Dutch women say they prefer to work part-time. Netherlands Institute for Social Research surveys found that only 4% of female part-timers want to work full-time. By contrast, 30% of French and Spanish women and 15% of Danish and German women want to make the switch, perhaps in part because Dutch part-time work includes a relatively high number of high-skill workers.

• Why don’t Dutch women want to work more? Tax policy has much to do with the preference, with recent laws increasing hourly after-tax income. In addition, with the varying decline of different marginal tax rates, women took home more of their income if it stayed lower.

• The changes in tax law, according to a 2009 study, led to a 3.5% increase in female labour participation, but while the overall national number of hours rose, it fell for women working part-time.

• Normally countries show a sharp increase in part-time labour as women start working, but the rate falls as more women can and do find full-time work.

• More Dutch men work part-time than in most comparable countries, but this seems to have little or nothing to do with family concerns.

• “Women are satisfied working part-time, because relatively high-skilled work can be done part-time, full-time work is not a financial necessity, and the burden of additional working hours is not shared within partnered families,” three economists writing in the European research portal Vox conclude in their overview of Dutch women’s labour participation.

The Vox report