Number of Women in Part-Time Jobs Thrice More Than Men

A “rapid growth” in part-time work in developed economies in the last few decades has led to an increase in the rate of working women in the country.

The percentage of part-time woman workers in the working age population (15-plus years) was between 23%-24% as compared to 7%-8% for men from 2017-18 to 2019-20 while it was between 15%-16% as against 3%-4% in urban areas, according to Working Paper on Compilation of Labour Indicators of Minimum Set of Gender Indicators released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Tuesday.

The NSO developed three labour indicators—the proportion of employed working part-time by sex, the proportion of employed who are employers by sex and the employment rate of persons aged 25-49 living in a household with, at least, one child under three years and with no children under three years living in the household by sex—from the Periodic Labour Force Survey data. The International Labour Organisation is the custodian agency for these indicators, the NSO said.

The report also showed that more women in the 25-49 age group with no child under three years of age are employed as part-timers than women with, at least, one child under three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20, The Indian Express reported. The employment rate of women in the 25-49 age group with no child under three years of age increased from 58.37% in 2017-18 to 61.2% in 2019-20. The presence of a child under three years in a household didn’t make any difference to the employment rate of men.

The proportion of employed persons working part-time in the 46-59 age group was more than 10% between 2017-18 to 2019-20 and more than 15% in the 60-plus age group.

“There has been rapid growth in part-time work in the past few decades in developed economies. This trend is related to the increase in female labour force participation but also results from policies attempting to raise labour market flexibility in reaction to changing work organisation within industries and to the growth of the services sector,” the NSO said.

Cautioned that such working arrangements [part-time work] may be “less economically secure and less stable than full-time employment”, the NSO said that policymakers have promoted part-time employment to “redistribute working time in countries of high unemployment, lowering politically sensitive unemployment rates without requiring an increase in the total number of hours worked”.