Working Time Flexibility and Family Life in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden

This paper focuses on working time flexibility and family life in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden based on comparable survey findings carried out in Spring 2001. In addition, a more detailed analysis of the UK survey findings is presented. The paper considers working time arrangements in the three countries, the part-time workforce and the experience of conflict between work and family life. The UK is found to be distinctive in the greater dispersion of working hours and in the specific gendered division of working time. The UK is also distinctive in the long hours that fathers work, in the high proportions of parents who wish to reduce their working hours in order to spend more time with their families (or conversely chose to work part-time hours in order to meet domestic commitments), in the extent to which long working hours impact on family life and finally, in the association between work flexibility and lack of employment protection for some female part-time workers.