SCP: no incentives against ‘part-time’

The ‘full-time bonus’ that the government is currently investigating with extra ‘urgency’ to counteract the shortage on the labor market will hardly have any effect on at least one important potential target group: older mothers who now work part-time. This is the opinion of the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) in a study published on Wednesday into the labor participation of women.

For this group of women, the care for their now somewhat older and more independent children is often (a lot) less intensive, so that in theory they could start working more. That would also be good for the emancipation of women, according to the SCP, because it increases their financial independence and ultimately more women end up in leadership positions. Nowhere in the world do more women now work part-time than in the Netherlands.

But a bonus for full-time employment will not tempt women with older children and part-time jobs to work more hours, the SCP suspects. Because “money is not the only incentive for most of them. Many other factors also play a role, such as that the work must also be interesting in terms of content or that working more hours can easily be arranged with the employer.” For its study, the SCP surveyed 525 women with children aged 8 to 24.

Policy falls short

Instead of a bonus, the government would do better to work on a ‘broader package’ of policy measures, such as facilitating ‘day arrangements’ for school-age children, encouraging more ‘care-friendly cultures’ in companies and better life career guidance. The current government policy is inadequate, because it is mainly aimed at mothers with young children (eg leave schemes and childcare). If this policy problem is solved, a large labor potential can be tapped. The group of mothers with older children makes up half of all part-time working women.

With its comments, the planning office joins other critics of the full-time bonus. In June, the cabinet announced an ‘action plan’ against the acute staff shortages. One of the ideas is to give people a financial bonus if they go full-time. During the Political Reflections last week, the two largest coalition parties, VVD and D66, urged the cabinet to speed up with such a measure. Minister Van Gennip (Social Affairs and Employment, CDA) then announced that he would investigate the possibilities and feasibility of a bonus with extra ‘urgency’.

The plan has also been criticized in the past. The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights ruled last year (the idea for a full-time bonus has been on the table since the corona crisis, when major shortages arose in healthcare and education) that Dutch labor legislation basically prohibits distinguish between employees on the basis of a difference in working hours. An exception could only be made if there was a very good reason for this. But that was “out of the question”. And if the bonus were not paid to employees who are already working full-time (the vast majority of whom are male), it could be discriminatory.

The same criticism as the SCP now sounded from the healthcare sector. Trade association Actiz would rather see a structural salary increase for all staff, including part-time workers. A full-time bonus would “mainly end up with doctors, and they already earn a lot more”.

Once part time, always part time

In its research, the SCP calls for ‘a broad social debate’ about the way in which paid and unpaid work are currently organised. The researchers have noticed that large numbers of women start working part-time after the arrival of their children, and continue to do so even when the children are older, or even have left home altogether. Two in three women never work as much after the arrival of their children as they did before they had children. The title of the study is therefore ‘Once part time, always part time‘.

According to the SCP, this is the result of a ‘deeply ingrained part-time culture and structure’ in the Netherlands, in which it is almost always women who start working less after the arrival of children. Employers, as well as women themselves and their partners, find this “natural”, writes the SCP. “Subtly and less subtly, women are steered towards part-time jobs when they have children. If they didn’t already do that.”

According to the SCP, different policy is needed to break through this, but also a major social debate about ‘the question of how we want to organize work and care in the future’. “After all, we can’t and take care of the children, and work full-time, and do volunteer work and take on caregiving tasks.”