Women and Part-time Employment: workers’ ‘choices’ and wage penalties in five industrialised countries

Abstract

This paper uses cross-nationally comparable data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) to analyse the patterns and consequences of part-time employment among women across five industrialized countries - Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States - as of the middle 1990s. The results reveal the influence of dependent care responsibilities related to the presence of young children and elderly household members. We also find unadjusted part-time wage penalties everywhere, ranging from 8-12% in Canada and Germany, to 15% in the UK, to as high as 22% in the US and Italy, meaning that part-time workers earn that much less than full-time workers. The sources of the observed wage gaps vary markedly across countries; only in Germany do we find evidence of 'discrimination' against part-time workers.