The leadership gap between full-time and part-time female employees

Abstract

Employers interpret high numbers of contractual working hours of part-time employees as a signal for high work engagement, qualifying them for a leadership position. However, signals do not work equally well in all environments. We suggest that the value of a signal depends on corporate culture, being relatively low in companies with strict work regimes where employees are expected to be available and visible. We test this prediction combining data on female employees and their employers. Our analyses show that the positive effect of contractual hours on leadership positions varies systematically with the difference between the contractual working hours of full-time and part-time employees. The smaller the working time difference between a full-time and a part-time employee, the more likely it is that the part-timer is in a leadership position. In addition, the more a firm relies on overtime and requires strict presence at work, the larger is the statistical association between high contractual hours and leadership positions at individual level. In a world where work-life balance is increasingly important, this research provides new insights into the heterogeneity of part-time workers and the design of corporate cultures and policies to create sustainable work environments.