The ‘low pay penalty’ associated with part-time employment and its gendered implications

Rather than looking across the earnings distribution as a whole (the ‘average worker model’), this thesis investigates the implications of working part time for men and women at the lower end of the distribution. Focusing on the UK, the thesis is comprised of four stand-alone papers, each of which explores a different aspect of the relationship between part-time employment and low pay. The results show that men and women who work part time are considerably more likely to be low paid, and less likely to progress out of low pay, than their full-time counterparts. Few previous studies of part-time employment include men in the analysis, or consider how the implications of working part time may differ according to gender. This thesis shows that the part-time ‘low pay penalty’ is, in fact, more pronounced for men than for women. However, women are disproportionately affected in the sense that they work part time in greater numbers. The analysis shows that part-time work has historically played, and continues to play, a crucial role in shaping gender inequality in low pay. However, there has been a sustained decline in the importance of part-time employment as a contributing factor to the gender gap in low pay for UK employees. The thesis provides robust estimates of the relationship between part-time employment and low pay across a range of European countries for the first time. Far from being a quirk of the UK labour market, the part-time ‘low pay penalty’ is observed in most, if not all, European countries. However, there is considerable variation in the extent to which part-time workers face a higher risk of low pay compared to full-time workers. This variation appears to be more closely related to the incidence of low pay than to cross-national differences in working time practices.