Women and Work in the Netherlands

The Netherlands are a quite interesting case with regard to female employment. From a European perspective, for a long time the level of female labour force participation was remarkably low and only comparable with Ireland and the south of Italy. Since the early seventies however, a rapid increase can been noticed: more and more women choose to participate on the labour market. The still rather special relationship between women and work in the Netherlands is, however, indicated by the fact that at this moment more than 60% of the Dutch women work part-time.