Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
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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). 

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Chapter 1 - Socio-structural developments in the Netherlands 1945-2012 
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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
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 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, 
                                                           
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  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).  

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