Part-Time Employment and Poverty Threats: Women’s Situation in Belgium
Type de matériel :
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While those fighting unemployment wonder whether to further flexibilize the labor market and let low wages and poverty boom, or to protect work, poverty then striking those excluded from the protective system, very few articles precisely deal with the degree of overlap between low wages and poverty. Furthermore, those which deal with the issue only focus on full-time workers having worked all year, a stable population per se. While part-time employment spreads, as a wide number of countries claim that it is a way of sharing work, we find it essential to reconsider the relation between low wages and poverty by including part-time workers. Furthermore, since part-time work is a typically female activity, we find it interesting to examine this relation from the double standpoint of working hours and gender.Low-wage earners in Belgium are actually mostly women working part-time. However, these people are not weakened when they live in a couple, since they are majoritarily part of the middle-class. Still, this situation bears the risk of future poverty in a context of ever-increasing marital separations as well as as regards retirement. Indeed, the population at risk counts people who benefit from no or few rights as individuals in the present social security system.
Réseaux sociaux