As a starting point, the statistics office surveyed people who graduated in the period 2007 to 2009. Nine years after graduation, less than 10 percent of men work part-time. This share is much higher for women, with a clear distinction to be made in terms of education. For example, according to Statistics Netherlands, 40 percent of women with a university degree will be working part-time by then, for women with an MBO diploma this is 67 percent. The share of part-time HBO graduates working part-time is in between.
Statistics Netherlands attributes this difference in part to the fact that women after their education are more likely to work in sectors where part-time jobs are common. For example, in education or healthcare. But even if the statistics office takes this into account, relatively few women have a full-time job.
Birth of first child
According to Statistics Netherlands, the choice of women for a part-time job is mainly related to the birth of their first child. Already four years before birth, more and more women seem to prefer a job with fewer hours. Moreover, once the child is born, the chance that women opt for a part-time job increases, according to Statistics Netherlands. This applies, for example, to women with a completed MBO education: 58 percent of them opted for a part-time job in the first year after giving birth.
But men are also taking the step to working part-time for that reason, according to the statistics office. They do, however, do so less often than women; the vast majority of men continue to work full-time.