Fertility, full-time and part-time female employment in Europe

• Author(s): Gomes, Cristina Sousa ; Oliveira, Isabel Tiago de ; Pinto, Maria Luis Rocha ; Cabrita, Miguel
• Date: 2012
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/3655
• Origin: Repositório do ISCTE-IUL
• Subject(s): Fertility; Female employment; Part-time employment; Full-time employment
• Document Type: Research paper
• Language: English

Description

This paper aims to analyse the relation between women’s employment patterns, more specifically part-time employment, and fertility trends in European countries, using Eurostat data. It is argued that this approach sheds an innovative light on the debate. The issue of part-time employment is put into perspective in the context of family policies and gender relations. The fertility/employment relationship shows that the overall positive association between fertility and female employment is a consequence of the importance of part-time employment and is not related with full-time employment. Therefore, the change in sign of the fertility employment association after the 1980s could result from the increasing diversification of the labour market.