Part-time: Beyond second best? Access to part-time employment: The cases of education and local government in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

Where working-time options are favourable to part-time ‘mummies’, part-time employment (PT) is likely to expand among other workers. The article adopts a case-oriented comparative approach in the UK and the Netherlands. Efforts to promote PT in the UK are hindered by segmentation and the long-hours culture, but job sharing is promoting an increase in the number of good PT jobs. In the Netherlands, PT is also gendered and segmented; however, access to PT is easier in a context of regulatory support where organizations, already facing short full-time employment and a high rate of PT, are learning to decouple business hours from employees’ shifts.