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oa Keuze of belemmering? De arbeidsmarktparticipatie van vrouwen
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken, Volume 24, Issue 2, Jun 2008,
Abstract
Choice or impediment? The labour participation of women
This article researches the influence of individual preferences on women's labour market behaviour in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom, addressing the question, to what extent do individual preferences have a causal effect on women's average weekly working hours? Using longitudinal panel data from all three countries, a fixed-effects model is applied to measure the effect of preferences in year t-1 on women's average weekly working hours in year t. The data are pooled from 1992 to 2002. After controlling for a number of individual, household and job characteristics we see that individual preferences are most influential in the Netherlands. However, the data do not support the idea that choice is more important than constraint because individual, household and job characteristics remain visible, even in the Netherlands. The results also demonstrate that it is important to understand individual preferences within the institutional context. Therefore, within the policy debate on increasing women's labour market participation we must consider possible barriers that hinder women when making labour market 'choices'.