Like most EU countries, Spain has seen an increase in part-time employment - mostly involving women in the services sector- in recent years. This feature examines the current part-time work situation in mid-2001 and the extent to which it involves discrimination against women.
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Like most EU countries, Spain has seen an increase in part-time employment - mostly involving women in the services sector- in recent years. This feature examines the current part-time work situation in mid-2001 and the extent to which it involves discrimination against women.
A recent study by the French sociologist Tania Angeloff paints an unhappy picture of part-time employment as a "fools' game" in France and elsewhere ("Le temps partiel: un marché de dupes?", Tania Angeloff, Paris, Syros, 2000). The study analyses a type of work that is in theory considered to be "atypical" but is becoming increasingly common in the labour markets of Europe, including Spain. From this perspective, part-time work occurs mostly in services, which recruit almost exclusively women and young people and provide them with low incomes and poor working conditions. The part-timers are forced to accept highly deregulated hours of work that make it difficult to reconcile work with family and social life. Spanish part-time workers are generally in a weaker and more vulnerable position than full-time workers.
Part-time employment driven by the needs of service industries is also present in the other countries of southern Europe, France and the UK. In the well-known case of the Netherlands, the very widespread nature of part-time employment seems, it is claimed, to conceal a dualised labour market in which there is considerable gender and ethnic segregation. The exception to this rule can be found in the Nordic countries, where part-time employment arose some years ago through the desire of women for shorter working hours to accommodate their roles as wives and mothers.
Below we examine the empirical data on the current part-time work situation in Spain, assessing whether this negative picture of part-time employment is accurate.
Part-time employment in Spain
In Spain, part-time employment has grown sharply since the labour market reform of 1994 that eased the wider use of this form of employment (ES9703203F), and it largely involves women. Both these features (increasing part-time work levels, dominated by women) were accentuated by the labour market reform of 1997 (ES9706211F), while most recently the March 2001 reform (which abolished the definition of part-time work as less than 77% of normal working hours - ES0103237F) seems to encourage this tendency.
The growth of part-time employment in Spain in the 1990s (at an average annual rate of 7.5% between 1992 and 1999), was basically due to the increase in such employment in certain service sector activities: large-scale retailing; telemarketing; other forms of home shopping such as those related to fast food; care services; and more traditional activities such as cleaning or domestic service and hotels and catering.
There are three characteristics that differentiate the current Spanish situation from that of other European Union countries. Firstly, the latest figures indicate that part-time employment as a proportion of total employment has ceased to increase, as shown in table 1 below. This stagnation was particularly apparent in 2000: 37,100 part-time jobs (the vast majority for women) were created in the second quarter of 2000, compared with 60,200 in the first quarter of 2000 and 85,000 in the second quarter of 1999.
| 1992 | 1996 | 1998 | 2000 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women | 13.7 | 17.0 | 17.2 | 17.2 |
| Men | 2.0 | 3.1 | 3.0 | 2.8 |
| Total | 5.8 | 8.0 | 8.1 | 8.2 |
Source: Survey of the Active Population (EPA).
A second characteristic of part-time employment in Spain relates to the reasons that lead people to accept a part-time job. Rather than personal choice, which is the main reason in the rest of the EU, Spanish part-timers claim that their employment status is due to the type of activity involved - see table 2 below.
| Reason for working part time | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| Type of activity | 41.3 | 41.5 |
| Failed to find full-time job | 23.5 | 22.8 |
| Other reasons | 15.6 | 19.9 |
| Family needs | 12.2 | 0.7 |
| Prefer part-time work | 4.3 | 2.7 |
| Need for training | 2.1 | 6.4 |
| Illness | 0.4 | 1.7 |
| Not classified | 0.6 | 4.3 |
Source: Survey of the Active Population (EPA), 2nd quarter 1998.
A final specifically Spanish characteristic is the high rate of temporary employment among part-time workers - 57.8% of part-time workers were on temporary contracts in 1999.
The data on part-time employment in Spain also appear to support the hypothesis that it represents a specific form of gender segregation. As can be seen in table 3 below, the percentage of all women workers in part-time employment is always higher than that of men in the same sector, though the percentages vary considerably from sector to sector. Taking into consideration the proportion of each sector's total workforce made up by women, it seems clear that in most sectors the level of female part-time employment is dependent on the demands of employers in that particular industry, rather than being the result of a personal choice shared by many women workers. This is best shown by a comparison of domestic service, where there is a high proportion of female workers and a high proportion of part-time workers, with the health sector, where there is a high proportion of female workers but a low proportion of part-time workers.
| Sector | % of women workers employed part time | % of men workers employed part time | Women as % of total workforce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fishing | 77.6 | 7.7 | 8.9 |
| Domestic service | 56.3 | 48.9 | 85.7 |
| Services to companies | 22.8 | 13.3 | 46.4 |
| Social/personal services | 21.3 | 15.7 | 47.6 |
| Hotels and catering | 17.6 | 11.9 | 46.2 |
| Water/gas/electricity | 16.7 | 2.3 | 9.0 |
| Construction | 16.0 | 1.4 | 3.6 |
| Education | 14.3 | 12.6 | 61.9 |
| Retail | 13.6 | 7.5 | 42.4 |
| Agriculture | 12.8 | 6.2 | 25.0 |
| Transport/communications | 10.3 | 3.1 | 17.0 |
| Industry | 9.2 | 2.9 | 22.7 |
| Finance/banking | 9.1 | 4.0 | 32.0 |
| Health | 8.3 | 3.4 | 71.7 |
| Public administration | 5.5 | 2.6 | 35.3 |
| Mining | 0.6 | 0.5 | 8.4 |
Source: Survey of the Active Population (EPA), 2nd quarter 1998.
Commentary
The criticisms of part-time employment made by a number of experts from around the EU state that this type of work is far from being a solution to unemployment. It is, they assert, clear that it has a lower social value than full-time work and involves the threat of a reduction in the social protection of the wage-earning population. Furthermore, part-time employment involves discrimination against women and is not merely a question of working hours. According to the secretary for women's issues at the Trade Union Confederation of Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO), part-time contracts, most of which involve women, lead to an increase in the discretionary powers of employers and force the employees to be more flexible in their working hours. This situation makes it difficult to reconcile work with family and social life. Furthermore, part-time contracts are often used unjustifiably instead of full-time contracts.
These criticisms of the current part-time employment situation in Spain raise questions about the call for shorter working hours as a solution to the country's current employment crisis. It is highly debatable whether part-time employment is a way of achieving shorter working time. It would be acceptable only if it did not discriminate against women and young people, as has been the case up to now, and if it resulted from agreements aimed at making enterprises more compatible with the aspirations of workers, as the Spanish trade unions are demanding. If shorter working time were obtained in this way. the situation of part-time employment would probably be very different. One must therefore wonder why shorter working time is still associated with part-time employment. (Teresa Torns, QUIT-UAB)
Eurofound recomienda citar esta publicación de la siguiente manera.
Eurofound (2001), Part-time employment examined, article.
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