Family-Friendly Work Schedule Flexibility in Europe: Who Gets Access to It?

Patrick Präg, University of Oxford
Melinda Mills, University of Oxford

Work schedule flexibility has been suggested to be a major linchpin for achieving gender equality on the labor market. Previous research has been largely occupied with the outcomes of work schedule flexibility; the antecedents of work schedule flexibility, especially from a cross-national angle, have hardly been studied. Analyzing Labor Force Survey data of 371,390 workers from 24 European countries with multivariate random effects models, we reveal large social gradients in the availability of flexible work schedules, not only between countries, as in more affluent countries more flexibility is available, but also within them. Within countries, our findings document substantial mismatches in the availability of flexible work schedules between the groups of workers who predominately need flexible schedules and those who have actually access to them.