Women who are now forty work more than forty-year-old women in the 1990s, according to an analysis by Statistics Netherlands. The statistical office compared female generations born in the second half of the 1950s to the second half of the 1970s.
Until the 1970s, women were expected to stop working after marriage or be fired upon the birth of their first child. Some of the women never returned to the labor market after that.
This is also reflected in the figures. In the 1990s, slightly more than half of women from the 1950s had paid work and a partner. Of the youngest generation, born in the 1970s, 60 percent had paid work and a partner by the age of 40. The proportion of women with a partner but without work decreased.
Bigger part-time job
Today, few women stop working altogether after having children. However, some choose to work fewer hours. The combination of partners with a full-time job and a large part-time job is most common these days. The combination of full-time and small part-time jobs is less today than in the 1990s.
The fact that women have started working more is also apparent from the division of working hours between couples. In the 1990s, 40-year-old women with a partner accounted for 34 percent of the working hours. This has risen to 39 percent for 40-year-old women born in the second half of the 1970s.
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