Work-Time, Male-Breadwinning and the Division of Domestic Labour: Male Part-Time and Full-Time Workers in Unsettled Times

Tracey Warren

doi:10.1177/00380385211019660

Abstract

The majority of male workers spend full-time hours in the labour market while part-time employment is heavily female dominated. A decade of economic unrest in the UK following the recession of 2008–2009 was accompanied by a considerable expansion in the numbers of men working part-time. Growing male part-time employment is a significant phenomenon, with potential for narrowing gender inequalities in ways of working, inside and outside the home. Applying a gendered lens to men’s working lives, the article focuses upon the ramifications of this growing male work-time diversity. Unsettled times can create the circumstances for opening up acceptable behaviours, for ‘undoing’ gender roles. The financial circumstances of male part- and full-timers, and men’s engagement in unpaid domestic work, are compared. Part-time jobs are associated with more financial hardship than are full-time, but they offer up the potential for narrowing gender inequality in the sharing of core domestic work tasks.

Highlights

This article examines male work-time through a gendered lens
A gender-informed analysis is invaluable because the UK norm of full-time work for men and extensive female-dominated part-time employment is charged with cementing the gendering of work, paid and unpaid: limiting the work-life choices available to women and men, and creating work intensification for women via bolstering their ‘two roles’ (Fagan et al, 2013)
The findings of this research show much continuity in gender and work-time: full-time working persisted as the norm for men in the UK and ‘transitional part-timers’ continued to dominate the male part-time labour force; more men working part-time reported financial hardship than did full-timers; and women still performed most of the unpaid domestic work in mixed-sex couple households

Summary

Introduction

This article examines male work-time through a gendered lens. The precise stimulus for the research was a notable expansion in the numbers of men working part-time during this time period: Labour Force Survey (LFS) data (Figure 1) show upward peaks, after a stage of more gentle growth. This increase in male part-timers provoked a range of critical and new questions among researchers and policy makers regarding the structure of the labour market and the quality of men’s jobs Our concern in this article is with the ramifications of growing work-time diversity among men for male workers and their households. When compared with male full-timers, how were male part-timers faring in financial terms: did they report equal levels of financial security or more hardship? did the men employed part- and full-time differ too in their involvement in unpaid domestic work?

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion