English abstract

Differences in Women’s Working Hours – a Question of Preferences?

The article is a contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the impact of preferences for work and family on the employment pattern of women. Based on longitudinal data on female nurses and female physicians, women’s attitudes to part-time work during training and in the first years as professionals are examined. Despite very different patterns of part-time work in the two occupations, female nurses and female physicians evaluate opportunities for part-time work in fairly similar ways. However, differences in the development over time of attitudes to part-time work are found. Nurses’ attitudes to part-time work appear to develop through a continuous process of adaptation, while physicians’ attitudes are relatively stable and to a lesser degree adapted to the occupational structure. Physicians’ evaluation of opportunities for part-time work seems to be more in line with national norms for women’s employment pattern than with physicians’ actual occupational opportunity structure.