Female part-time work in the Netherlands  Nicole Bosch, Jan van
Ours, Bas van der Klaauw, 5 September 2009    In the early
1980s, labour force participation of prime-aged women in the
Netherlands was among the lowest in the OECD. As shown in Figure
1, in the following two decades, labour force participation
increased substantially to almost the OECD average (OECD, 2004).
The rise in participation rates was mainly due to women working
part-time. However, whereas in, for example, Scandinavian
countries the incidence of part-time work went down after the
initial rise in participation rates, female part-time work
remains much more popular in the Netherlands than in any other
OECD country (see Figure 2).  Figure 1. Labour force
participation rates of prime-age women (aged 25-54)  During the
1980s and 1990s, part-time work was praised as a way to increase
the low female participation rates. However, the attitude
towards part-time work among policymakers has changed. Now, a
part-time job is often considered a trap i