Dualization and the access to occupational family-friendly working-time arrangements across Europe

This paper examines outsider’s relative access to occupational level family-friendly policies. I use data from the European Working Condition Survey of 2015 across 30 European countries examining worker’s access to two types of family-friendly working-time arrangements; flexitime, time off work for personal reasons. The paper focuses on women with care responsibilities given that their demands for family-friendly policies, as well as their outcomes have been shown to be distinct from other working population. In addition to the outsider definition used in the labour market dualization and occupational segmentation literature, i.e., low-skilled workers, those without a permanent contract, this paper also defines outsiders as those with job insecurity. The results of the analysis show a segmentation between workers in their access to family-friendly policies. Unlike statutory policies, occupational policies seem to be selectively provided mostly to workers where employers have a vested interest, i.e., insiders, resulting in a dualized system for most countries. However, rather than their contract status, the skill-level of the job/workers, and their perceived insecurity was found to be important. The results further shows that although Northern European and some continental European countries are those where family-friendly working-time arrangements are more readily available, it is here where the division between insiders and outsiders are the largest. The results of the paper contribute to the literature by showing a need to move beyond the national level when examining family-friendly policies, and to examine a more diverse definition of outsiders when examining dualization of working conditions.