Women have low impact on Dutch work force
As an immigrant, there will always be about 10% of Dutch quirks I will never understand, and one of them is the preponderance of part-time work. It’s very difficult to explain to my friends and family in Canada or elsewhere why it looks like nobody really works here, especially highly educated Dutch women who, as they tell me jokingly at networking events, ‘have men who bring home the real bacon’.
“The Netherlands has the highest rate of part-time workers within the European Union, and it applies to both men and women.” The Dutch also have a very high standard of living which is not reflected in the amount of hours they actually work. I recently read that the Greeks worked the most hours, but earned very little for it. That nonsense about working hard to make money they spoon fed me in North America is one huge myth here in Europe.
“In 2008, nearly half of 15 to 64-year-old Dutch worked on a part-time basis and three quarters of Dutch women work on a part-time basis. In all other EU countries, at least half of working women had full-time jobs.”
My gut says when the Dutch do something spectacularly different than the rest of Europe it’s either brilliant or skewed. In this case, I think it is the latter, and so do many different groups in Dutch society pushing to change this image of women being rather passive members of society. To quote a female television journalist I met recently, “women can always choose to work less and that is not frowned upon, but have to fight if they want to work more”. Ironically, the Christian government is both ‘encouraging’ women to have more children and also trying to make them feel guilty for not becoming top managers. In other words, not only are women hearing two totally different messages, both of them are backwards and do nothing to alleviate the situation of women who want both – just like in the rest of Europe and the Western world.
The usual excuses for this state of affairs includes women automatically taking 100% care of children (tradition), not wanting to let other qualified people handle their children (guilt), not being able to combine motherhood and work (logistics), men not doing their fair share (not my male friends, but other ones), having no ambition (huge cover stories in magazines keep repeating this), foreign women having much more ambition (why do they manage and the Dutch don’t?) and all kinds of other stuff that comes up at parties.
It’s a big ol’ can of worms, it’s complicated, it’s difficult to understand, it’s even tougher to live with, but something is definitely wrong here.
(Link: crossroadsmag.eu, Photo: hamac.fr)
Seems like deep-seated gender roles as well as sexism at play here. Some women still seem to believe that they’re incomplete until they have families (not necessarily marry, though). If this notion is subscribed to by a highly educated/skilled woman, we get this conundrum. Add to this the fact that even such highly qualified women generally are omitted from executive positions and higher salaries, the natural option to gain responsibility and make a difference is in childrearing.
The women I’ve met so far here in germany have a full-time job but they’re very willing to give it up in favour of raising a child.
In Germany, as soon as a woman gets a baby, she has the right to stay at home for (hold on to your socks) 3 years – partly paid for by her employer, partly by the state. After these 3 years, she can reclaim her job and the employer cannot fire her in the mean time. I’ve seen on several occasions though, that the young mother decides to have another kid during these three years, which resets the 3 year clock.
If however, the *father* decides to stay at home and take care of the baby, the rules are different, making the choice for who’s going to look after the kid a pretty obvious one.
In conclusion: the NL has some weird shit going on regarding parenting, but they’re not the only country in Europe doing so…
If Angela Merkel was of child-bearing age, she’d would never have been elected. Same goes for Thatcher, and women presidents in India and Indonesia. Sigh.
oh well, 1 of my (male) colleagues thinks it is “normal” to pay women standard 10% less for the same job than men, ’cause women can be a risk for employers. euh? yeah, well, women getting pregnant and all… okay, so what is the role of men in this pregnancy, only to dump seed and after that happily return to their (other) boss? as long as we keep thinking like this where ever in the world, we never ever get a balanced workload. on the other hand I really enjoy my part-time job, but only after I worked full-time for many years and decided there was more in life than (paid) work. it had very little to do with my kids, ’cause they also have a dad, school, daycare, friends, family and working hours in NL are really relaxed (me thinks) but okay, I know… I’m a bit different from the standard, I also want to earn my own living and not wait for my hubby to bring home the real bacon *giggle* … my 2 cents A.
[…] Women have low impact on Dutch work force […]
[…] See also: Women have low impact on Dutch work force. […]
[…] 2009: Women have low impact on Dutch work force […]