Preliminary Programme

This paper considers the historical roots of a gendered Swedish working time regime and discusses the growth of part time work, both as a political discursive solution and applied model of employment for married women in the public sector 1938 – 1980. A vast labour shortage in the after war years meant that many political efforts were directed towards integrating married women in to the labour force, and part time work was considered an important means to that end. Although part-time work has never been induced by legislation, the welfare state has played an essential role in the development, both through intense official investigation, labour market policies in which potential employers as well as employees were targeted, and through its role as a part time employer. The paper analyses the motives and perceptions of gender, work and gainful employment in the public debate on part-time work, in order to understand the some of forces behind the labour market organisation of gender and time. (Show less)

My presentation will focus on the impact of the French law implementing the 35-hour week on the way parents with young children reconcile work and family life. Results are drawn from an original survey conducted among a representative sample of 3216 families with at least one child under six years old. It was carried out two years after the implementation of the first law reducing working time. Six out of ten respondents – fathers and mothers - reported a positive impact on the balance between their work and family life. The degree of satisfaction is higher where the organisation of work is regular, and based on standard working hours. Satisfaction is also highly correlated to the negotiation process in the workplace. However, the reduction of working time revealed inequalities between workers: between those employed in sheltered economic sectors and “family-friendly” companies with a tradition of social dialogue, and those facing severe constraints in the workplace, or who had had to accept unsocial or flexible hours of work in exchange for a reduction of working time, without any consideration for their family obligations. This widens the gulf between these two groups of workers irrespective of gender and professional status. (Show less)

The demand for labour in the growing Swedish economy after the Second World War brought new life to the discussions of part-time work as a means to facilitate married women's participation in paid work. In spite of an ambivalent attitude from employers, trade unions and women's organisations, the idea of part-time employment as a solution to a work-life balance problem mainly experienced by women, gained ground during the 1960s. Concurrently with the increasing use of part-time employed women in certain trades, such as retail, there was a growing awareness of the drawbacks and part-time work was reassessed as rather being an obstacle for, than promoting, equal opportunities. Already in the 1970s the Commercial Employees' Union, Handelsanställdas förbund, argued that the part-time problem contributed to maintaining the gender division of labour - both in the labour market and in the household. The employers in the trade had, on the other hand, gone from being sceptical to part-time work to claiming the need for part-time employments as a flexibility strategy. The changes in how part-time employment has been interpreted demonstrate the need for a historical perspective in order to assess part-time work today. Several international comparative studies have also highlighted the complexity concerning part-time work and there is a growing awareness of the need for more elaborated models of explanations. As an important female dominated union, Handelsanställdas Förbund has during the period after the Second World War, played a significant role considering the development of part-time employment - both as a social and as a discursive practice. The aim of my project, concerning the development of part-time employment in the Swedish retail trade since the Second World War, is to analyse the role played by the system of industrial relations in shaping a gendered working time regime and a changing discourse of part-time work. Acting within a system of industrial relations Handelsanställdas förbund has had to consider a number of interrelated factors such as changing labour market conditions and regulations, a changing gender discourse and diverging interest - not only between different trade unions or between the union and women's organisations, but also within the union itself. (Show less)