Part-time working arrangements have been lauded as both facilitating caring responsibilities and allowing women to maintain a presence in the labour market, avoiding skills obsolescence and depreciation of their human capital (Hakim 1996, Houseman 2001, Rubery et al. 1994). However, despite its apparent benefits, women working part-time are more likely to be lower paid (O'Sullivan 2012, Russo and Hassink 2008), less educated, older and working in temporary, low-level jobs with poor job tenure (Manning and Petrongolo 2008, Salladarré and Hlaimi 2014). Using the sociological concepts of a dual or segmented market as expressed by Doeringer and Piore (1971) division of a primary and secondary labour market, this paper explores the choices of older women in Ireland to work part-time.
Part-time jobs have typically been characterised as rooted in the secondary labour market (Tijdens 2002), which consists of ‘low level, unskilled jobs which require no specific training’ (Dekker et al. 2002, p.109). These jobs are often inferior in nature, attract poorer conditions and rates of pay (Fernandez-Kranz and Rodriguez-Planas 2011), offer fewer promotional prospects (Glover and Arber 1995, Gornick and Jacobs 1996, Ketsche and Branscomb 2003, McDonald et al. 2006) and provide less security of employment (Tijdens 2002) compared with full-time positions. Additionally, research by O’Reilly and Bothfeld (2002) found that only a small share of employees use part-time jobs as a bridge to full-time positions.
This research addresses the gap in knowledge of the complex factors affecting women’s labour markets (Ghilarducci and Lee 2005). Accordingly, these issues are interrogated through testing Dual labour market theory on this cohort of worker. The posing of this question is particularly relevant given that increased life expectancy and the reduction in the proportion of the working age population will necessitate older people working into their late 60s and beyond in Ireland in the future.
Using data from the National Employment Survey 2008, a matched employer-employee dataset, descriptive and multivariate (binary logistic regression) analyses were conducted. The findings reveal that the factors likely to influence part-time working among older females include under-employment, limited educational attainment, few years’ work experience and service sector employment in lower occupations. The study also finds that the characteristics associated with these jobs include low-wage, private sector employment with few employment benefits.
This study adds to our knowledge of part-time working by older females and supports the notion that labour markets are segmented into clearly defined segments with different employment conditions. Older female part-time workers in Ireland are significantly more likely to work in secondary labour market employment where it is the characteristics of the job, rather than the person, that determines the terms and conditions of employment.
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