Friday 8 September 2017
WOMEN have become far more likely than men to work part time because they can’t find full-time work following the 2008 recession, a study has found.
Academics from the University of Salford and Sheffield
Hallam University have found that since 2008 the chances of underemployment
have grown much faster for women than for men – with far fewer full time jobs
available in occupations likely to be carried out by women.
The study,
published in Human Relations, also found that those women
who were forced to work in part time roles were far less happy and more anxious
than those in full time employment.
Report main author Dr Daiga Kamerade from the University of
Salford said: “The 2008 recession was the recession of underemployment.
Although unemployment levels did not rise dramatically, as had happened in
previous economic crises, 2008 led to a marked increase in underemployment –
people working in jobs below their capacity in terms of working hours, skills
and qualifications.
“Our report has shown this has had a much greater effect on
women than it has on men.”
The proportion of people wanting to work more hours than
are available to them was at around five per cent of the workforce between
2001-2006 but had increased to 10 per cent by 2013.
The researchers studied data from the UK Annual Population
(APS) Survey, based on interviews with 994,039 people between 2006 and 2013, as
well as responses to the government’s Measuring National Wellbeing surveys.
They found that while women were always more likely than
men to be underemployed, even before the recession began, the levels of
underemployment for both sexes expanded rapidly following 2008. By 2013, women
had become 1.6 times more likely than men to be unable to find a full time job.
The shortage in full time positions is much greater in
traditionally female dominated occupations such as sales, services and
administration, as well as in the public sector – which has larger numbers of
female employees – while the shortage of full-time jobs is less pronounced in
male dominated occupations such as management, skilled trades and in the
private sector.
Underemployment causes problems for a worker’s wellbeing,
with people in part time work having less access to training, being more likely
to face financial hardship, and having a lower likelihood of promotion.
Dr Daiga Kamerade, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the
University of Salford, said: “The choice matters because of workers’ happiness.
We found that both men and women who work part-time because they want to work
part-time were happier than full-time employees.
“However, part-timers who did not want part-time work but
had to accept it because they could not find a full-time job are the least
happy of all the groups surveyed – and this is the group predominantly made up
of female workers.”