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The Effects of Part-Time Work on Women's Occupational Mobility in Britain: Evidence from the 1958 Birth Cohort Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Shirley Dex  and
Erzsébet Bukodi
Shirley Dex*
Affiliation:
Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, University of London
Erzsébet Bukodi
Affiliation:
Oxford Institute of Social Policy, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, and Nuffield College, University of Oxford. We would like to thank Heather Joshi and two anonymous referees for their critical comments and suggestions. This study was funded as part of the ESRC Priority Gender Inequalities Network, Project 1, Reference RES-225-25-2001
*
E-mail: s.dex@ioe.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The effects of working part time on job downgrading and upgrading are examined over the life course of British women born in 1958. We use longitudinal data with complete work histories from a large-scale nationally representative cohort study. Occupations were ranked by their hourly average earnings. Analyses show a strong link between full-time/part-time transitions and downward and upward occupational mobility over the course of up to thirty years of employment. Probabilities of occupational mobility were affected by women's personal traits, occupational characteristics and demand-side factors. Downward mobility on moving from full-time to part-time work was more likely for women at the top levels of the occupational hierarchy working in male-dominated or mixed occupations and less likely in higher occupations with more part-time jobs available.

Keywords

Part-time workcareer progressionwomendowngradinglongitudinal dataJ16J62Z13
Type
Research Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 222 , October 2012 , pp. R20 - R37
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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