Can More Women Be Encouraged to Work?
L. Kuleshova, Employment of Women on Short Work Schedules. April-June 1979
Co-author T. Mamontova
Original Source: Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 2 (April-June 1979), pp. 90-92.
In 1977 we conducted a survey of women who work full-time or part-time at 120 light industry, machine building, trade, passenger transportation, local industry, and consumer- services enterprises in 10 republics-Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldavia, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Kirghizia, as well as executives of those enterprises. Our purpose was to determine women's actual and potential motives for switching to a short workday, to elucidate the actual and optimal length of that day, and to ascertain the factors hindering the increased adoption of that schedule.
A total of 76.1% of the women surveyed who were employed full-time expressed a desire to switch to part-time work, 51% of these to a short day and the other 25.1% to a short week. Only 23.9% of the women surveyed were entirely satisfied with a full-time schedule.
The main reasons the women cited for wanting to work part-time are: childrearing-62.3%; a desire for more free time-14.2%; the need to do housework-10.7%; and health reasons-6.8%. The latter two factors were the primary ones for women over 35.
Only 15.2% of the women who favored the shift to part-time work wanted to work four hours per day, and 21. 1% preferred a five-hour day. Fully 63. 7% wanted to work six or seven hours a day.
The survey showed that women's job performance improved, as a rule, when they switched to a reduced work schedule. Moreover, in many cases it became possible for them to attend school part-time as well, with no infringement on their family responsibilities. What objections could there have been, then?
Many enterprise executives pointed to a scarcity of women who want to work part-time (while at the same time fearing in many cases that a mass switch to part-time work might begin). This difficulty occurs most often when attempts to staff a part-time brigade are made within a
single enterprise instead of in cooperation with other enterprises. The survey also found, meanwhile, that the public is poorly informed about the possibility of part-time employment, the result being that the only alternative to full-time work has often been thought to be not to work at all. Of the women we surveyed who were not employed in the public sector, 57% said they would like to get a part-time job.
Enterprise executives also argued that an increase in the number of part-time jobs would exacerbate the labor shortage. We found, however, that 22.4% of the women we surveyed would have wanted to quit their jobs entirely if they had been unable to switch to a part-time arrangement temporarily. And they estimated that they would work the reduced schedule for only four years, on the average, before returning to full-time. Thus the availability of part-time work has actually eased the labor shortage.
Moreover, the economic losses incurred through switching some employed women to part-time work are offset by their greater hourly productivity. In fact, the average hourly labor productivity of employees who work four to six hours per day is 15% to 30% higher than that of fulltime employees.
Our investigation found, all in all, that the chief stumbling block to the expansion of part-time employment is a negative attitude on the part of executives, stemming from their underestimation of the importance of social and psychological factors on the job, a lack of experience in making part-time arrangements and a lack of incentive to do so. Ministries and departments should therefore devote more serious effort to creating part-time jobs at the enterprises under their jurisdiction, particularly for mothers of small children.
Our study also found, by the way, that the economy stands to gain from employing elderly persons on a part-time basis. Of the women we surveyed, 4.3% of those employed part-time were between the ages of 55 and 77, and were working an average of 4.6 hours per day. Some had worked 10 years or more already on this basis since reaching retirement age, yet clearly would not have been capable of handling full-time jobs during this period. Expanded part-time work will thus also serve to attract more able-bodied pensioners into the work force, to ease their transition to full retirement, and to reduce our country's labor shortage as well.
Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XXXI, No. 22 (1979), p. 14.