Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers
28
women are not divided equally among sectors; moreover, horizontal segregation
has increased in the last few years (Merens et al., 2012).
Particularly interesting in the Dutch labour market is that, compared to other
Western countries, the employment pattern of Dutch women is the most
differentiated (table 1). The employment pattern of Dutch men is also the most
differentiated compared to that
of the other countries; the difference with women
is that men’s part-time employment is mainly practiced at the periods in the life
cycle during which they do not have family responsibilities (age 15-25 & 55-65).
Table 1. Labour participation patterns of men and women of working age (aged 15 to
64) in selected OECD countries, 2011
Men
Women
Work hours
0
1-19
20-34
≥35
0
1-19
20-34
≥35
Belgium
32.9
2.1 5.5 59.5
43.3 8.1 18.5 30.1
Denmark
24.1
7.8 5.1 63.0
29.6 11.1 18.8 40.5
Finland
29.1
3.4 6.3 61.2
32.5 5.4 11.4 50.7
France
31.9
1.7 4.1 62.3
40.3 5.2 13.5 41.0
Germany
22.6
4.5 3.9 69.0
32.3 14.0 18.3 35.4
Italy
32.5
1.5 4.7 61.2
53.5 4.4 14.2 27.9
Japan
19.8
2.7 10.4 66.7
39.7 6.3 21.0 32.7
Netherlands
20.2
9.3 10.9 59.5
30.1 21.7 31.9 16.3
Spain
35.9
1.4 3.6 59,1
47.2 4.2 10.9 37.7
Sweden
23.7
3.7 7.1 65.4
28.1 5.7 20.3 45.9
United
Kingdom
24.5
4.9 6.5 64.1
34.7 13.8 18.1 33.4
United
States 28.6
2.6 6.4 62.4
38.0 4.5 11.2 46.4
OECD
Countries
27.0
3.1 6.3 63.6
43.3 6.6 13.0 37.1
Source: OECD Statistics
This large variation makes the Netherlands a suitable case to study the causes of
the variation in labour market participation of mothers. Why do some mothers
have
a full-time job, while most other work part-time or are not employed at all?
Nevertheless, before I investigate this question theoretically and empirically on a
micro-level, I will discuss the historical context of cultural and structural
characteristics of Dutch society in relation to female employment. Mothers’
actions and interactions on a micro-level are embedded (enabled and constrained)
within these ‘impersonal and endurable’ socio-structural and historical
characteristics on a macro-level.
university level women had a job of 28 hours or more per week, and 58 per cent of the higher
polytechnic educated women. Among women with an intermediate polytechnic educational level
or lower, circa 30 per cent worked less than 28 hours, and 20 per cent had a full-time job (Merens
et al., 2012).
Chapter 1 - Socio-structural developments in the Netherlands 1945-2012
29
1.2 1945-1960
Breadwinners
and
housewives
As mentioned, after World War II, the labour market
participation of women was
particularly low in the Netherlands when compared to other Western countries.
Various explanations are acknowledged for this low female participation level in
the Netherlands: the long and strong cultural tradition of housewives (Kloek,
2009, p.194), late industrialisation and the introduction of wage labour (Kremer,
2007, p.91; Pott-Buter, 1993). Furthermore, relatively high productivity rates
permitted a lower labour market participation rate among women (Plantenga,
1993). Other reasons cited include Dutch neutrality during the First World War
(when women were not needed in the labour market), Dutch religious
characteristics, high birth rates and Dutch prosperity (Kremer, 2007, p.60; Smidt,
2005).
Kloek (2009) describes how in the Netherlands during the 1950s and 1960s,
the ideal of women as housewives and men as breadwinners reached its most
‘glorious’ days. The domestic standards for Dutch housewives could not have
been higher. Never were the rooms so clean (at a
time when houses also became
bigger and housemaids disappeared almost entirely), the dinners so nice, fashion
followed with such close interest, and the upbringing of children taken so
seriously (Kloek, 2009). The figuration ideal
13
in this period is referred to,
especially
within marriage, as harmonious inequality (Komter, 1990b; Stolk and
Wouters, 1983). It is deemed ‘unequal’, because women did not have, either
formally or informally, the same privileges as men, and ‘harmonious’ because
these inequalities within the public and private spheres were not perceived as
unfair. The state of affairs was taken for granted
and assumed to be the way it
should be.
For women, especially for mothers, it was not considered necessary or even
desirable to join the labour market. The general tendency was that in a
functioning welfare state, families should be able to afford to have their children
at home. The family was perceived as the cornerstone of
Dutch society, and
professional childcare was regarded as immoral (Kremer, 2007). A mother’s
natural role was to occupy herself with household chores and raising children.
The husband earned the family income and had full rights to wages and social
security; for a woman, marriage was her social security. Most girls had only a
short educational training, and worked until they got married. In 1970, 90 per cent
of girls married, on average at the age of 23 years old (Tijdens, 2006).
In the background of
this breadwinner ideology, the typically Dutch social
structure of pillarization or columnization also existed: namely, the presence of
various kinds of organisations sharing similar goals but with different
denominational bases. In the Netherlands, four such pillars existed: Catholic,
13
Figuration ideals can be described as ideals or moral views (including mechanisms of inequality)
that exist within and outside people and function as interdependent chains
between people
dissolving the micro and macro level (Stolk and Wouters, 1983; Layder, 1994, p.115).