Maeve O'Sullivan
University of Limerick
Maeve is currently undertaking a PhD in the area of industrial gerontology at the University of Limerick where she is an adjunct lecturer in HRM, organisational behaviour and social psychology of work. Previous roles include freelance facilitator, trainer and business consultant and former European Commission official, based in Brussels.
Part-time working arrangements have traditionally been viewed as an excellent means of remaining in the labour market (Mertens et al. 1995) and of reducing skills obsolescence and human capital depreciation. Although popular for many years, the level of part-time employment has increased recently, attracting greater employment rights for workers such as the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act, 2001 in Ireland.
In addition to occupation (Anxo et al. 2007, Galtier 1999, Salladarré and Hlaimi 2014), recent studies have shown that personal characteristics such as age (Cassirer 2003, Isusi and Corral 2004), marital status (Salladarré and Hlaimi 2014, Thurman and Trah 1990) and human capital attributes such as education and training (Salladarré and Hlaimi 2014) all contribute to the likelihood of women working part-time, as does the presence of children in the household (Anxo et al. 2007, Paull 2008). Factors associated with the workings of the labour market have also contributed to this trend (Cohen and Stier 2006), including both demand- and supply-side influences in addition to institutional and regulatory factors such as statutory provisions, collective agreements and family-friendly policies (OECD 2010, Salladarré and Hlaimi 2014, Bönker and Wollmann 2001). Demand-side factors such as the growth of the service sector (Buddelmeyer et al. 2008, Blossfeld and Hakim 1997), product demand fluctuations (Reilly 1998), short-term cost reduction techniques and production increases (Cassirer 2003, Tilly 1996) have all led to the increase in part-time employment.
Research indicates that older adults in Ireland work fewer hours and are more likely to work part-time as they approach state pension age - almost one-quarter of males and over half of all females aged 60-64 work part-time (Barrett et al. 2011) . Whilst part-time working has become increasingly popular, particularly among young workers and women, it is useful to examine why this is and what advantages it offers to employees.
The central research question posed in this study is why do so many older female workers in the Irish private sector work part-time? This question is posed in the context of the fact that most part-time jobs are considered low-skilled and are concentrated in the secondary labour market. Much research has focused on the gender pay gap between male and female employees with little attention given to the impact of age on preferred working arrangements, choice of occupations and availability of good-quality part-time jobs. Specifically, this research seeks to address the question of why older females work part-time in the private sector in Ireland.
This research furthers our understanding of the factors associated with the decision to work part-time. Using data from the National Employment Survey 2008, descriptive and multivariate (binary logistic regression) analyses were conducted. The findings show that the likelihood of working part-time because of under-employment are greater for older female part-time workers than for the other cohorts of part-time workers examined in this study. These results have significant implications for national policy development and for reliable workforce planning into the future.
