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Women workers will find themselves at a disadvantage when competing in the labour market with men if they are not able to take advantage of promotion opportunities, regardless of whether they are full‐ or part‐timers. Women now make up 40 per cent of the UK labour force. However 46 per cent of employed women work part‐time compared with only 2 per cent of employed men. To a considerable extent this unequal position of women within the occupational structure is due to the particularly weak labour market position of married women who seek part‐time jobs. Married women are constrained by their family responsibilities in the type of work they take. Their situation contrasts sharply with men and women who enter the labour market straight from education with no domestic hindrances. Better occupational prospects for women workers will only be achieved if they have access to a wider range of occupations and are given the same opportunities for training and promotion as full‐timers.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the employment trajectories, aspirations, work‐life balance and career mobility of women working as part‐time managers.

In‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 16 female part‐time managers and four of their line managers in public and private‐sector organizations. Interviews explored women's career trajectories before and after the transition to part‐time work and focused on career mobility, aspirations and work‐life balance.

The part‐time managers in this sample held varied careers while working full‐time but careers stalled once a transition to part‐time work was made. The majority were career focused, worked intensively and felt frustrated with their lack of mobility and career progression while working part‐time. The majority worked in excess of their contracted hours and did not experience an appropriate reallocation of work when they reduced hours.

This paper is of value to both researchers and policy makers. Policy implications point to the limitations of the current UK legislation on the right to request flexible working. The paper states that further research would be beneficial on the ways in which managers employed on part‐time and other flexible contracts, operate successfully in organizations, with the aim of championing alternative working patterns and breaking down traditional long hours cultures which act as a barrier to women and part‐time workers.

This paper explores the employment profiles and experiences of a little studied and rare group of female workers.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the interplay between individual women’s gender role attitudes, having young children at home, as well as the country-context characterized by gender egalitarianism and public childcare support, relates to women’s working hours in 23 European countries.

This study presents results of multilevel regression analyses of data from the European Social Survey (Round 2). These micro-level data on 23 European countries were combined with country-level measures on gender traditionalism and childcare expenditure.

The authors found that the negative association between having young children at home and women’s working hours is stronger for women with traditional gender role attitudes compared to women with egalitarian attitudes. The gap in working hours between women with and without young children at home was smaller in countries in which the population holds egalitarian gender role attitudes and in countries with extensive public childcare support. Furthermore, it was found that the gap in employment hours between mothers with traditional or egalitarian attitudes was largest in countries with limited public childcare support.

Policy makers should take note that women’s employment decisions are not dependent on human capital and household-composition factors alone, but that gender role attitudes matter as well. The authors could not find evidence of the inequality in employment between women with different gender role attitudes being exacerbated in association with childcare support.

The originality of this study lies in the combined (rather than separate) analysis of how countries’ social policies (childcare services) and countries’ attitudes (gender traditionalism) interact with individual gender role attitudes to shape cross-national variation in women’s working hours.

This paper aims to explore gender differences in terms of self-employment for US Millennials, relating them to working from home as well as other factors.

The authors use a population-based survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which allows to compare home-based vs non-home-based self-employed women and men on a wide variety of characteristics. Descriptive analyses reveal the unconditional relationships between the covariates of interest, and the authors use ordinary least squares regression to reveal the conditional correlations between working from home and earnings for both women and men.

The authors find that working from home is highly negatively correlated with earnings for women, but not for men, and that working from home may trump the other characteristics typically associated with lower earnings.

The regression subsample is relatively small (n = 245), leading to omitted variable bias in the regression. The “working-from-home” variable is potentially endogenous. The small sample size does not allow the authors to use detailed information on the self-employment industry. Future research should focus on finding larger samples and a way to instrument for working from home.

Work/life trends and communications technology have made working from home more prevalent (Mateyka et al., 2012). It is important for researchers and policymakers to understand the gendered implications of basing a business at home.

The study is the first to use population-based data to focus specifically on gender gaps in earnings of self-employed Millennials in relation to working from home.

This paper aims to clarify an impact of Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 (Amendment 2017) on job employment of working mothers. It proposes the certain facts that has positive impact on employment of women from the point of view of Government of India, but at the same time it highlights some negative implications that are faced by the employers and working mothers. The objective of this act is to provide a woman with a financial assistance and make her free from engaging in any work so as to protect health of “New Mother” and “New Born child”. Also, the act ensures women to take care of her child without having worry about loss of her job and loss of her employment.

This paper carries efforts of researcher done on the topic of “Impact of Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 (Amendment 2017)” and measures its impact on employers and job employment of working mothers in India through literature review from various sources like SCOPUS, EMERALD, EBSCO, PROQUEST, SAGE, etc. The paper opted for an exploratory study using the questionnaire approach of grounded theory, including 50 in-depth interviews of working mothers.

Outcome of this describes both positive and negative implications of this amendment on businesses and job employment of working mothers. It throws the limelight on implementation of this act in real life and identification of problems and stress faced by women employee either to get the job or to retain the job during pregnancy period which is very hazardous to the health of women and her inborn child also.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications of the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 (Amendment 2017) on employers whether to hire women employee or not and on women though they are having capability to do work but because of ignorance of government on ensuring proper implementation of act, women are not getting opportunity to work after baby birth.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study and find some measures for effective implantation of Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 (Amendment 2017) so as to protect and regulate employment of women workers before and after child birth so as to increase female labour force participation rate.

Women's travel pattern is different from those of men. Women who have both paid employment and unpaid care work have more complex travel patterns. However, land-use policies and urban mobility strategies in the Egyptian context do not consider these differences. This paper analyzes and discusses the travel patterns of the Egyptian working women with children. It examines the difference between men's and women's travel behavior in different income levels. The paper aims at determining the main factors that affect working women's travel patterns within the care economy framework and suggesting recommendations for enhancing women's travel patterns in Greater Cairo Region (GCR).

The methodology relies on conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis using questionnaires and interviews with working women and men from different social/economic levels in two different workplaces in GCR.

The results demonstrate that income level, workplace locations, schools locations, and schools typologies greatly affect working women's travel patterns in GCR.

The study findings will help urban planners and decision-makers to improve working women's mobility to make their daily trips shorter and more accessible to achieve equitable cities through understanding the conducted affecting factors and considering the suggested recommendations.

The study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of challenges faced by Indian women professionals during the pandemic and the human resource (HR) initiatives like effective communication, taken by the organizations to mitigate the plight of these professionals.

A mix of two qualitative research methods namely focus groups in-depth and one-to-one in-depth interviews was used. A total of 32 females working with different organizations participated.

The thematic analysis revealed themes related to challenges faced by working women-gendered burnout, mental health issues, increased household responsibilities, job insecurity, work-life conflict, gender inequalities, reduced internal communication and financial independence, domestic violence and exploitation. The major themes that emerged for the organizational initiatives were flexible working hours, equal women representation in response to planning and decision making, driving transformative change for gender equality, paid leaves for family care, caregiving bonus, leadership development seeds, increased female recruitments, transparent communication and counseling sessions.

The study establishes a holistic understanding of the plight of Indian women professionals and the consequent organizational interventions accompanied by transparent communication. It adds rigor to the evolving literature on COVID-19 and enriches the theoretical narrative of policy adaptations by industry practitioners for aligning them with employee needs. This helps in routing the policy design and implementation in light of the challenges faced.

The study presents an in-depth understanding of challenges faced by women employees; and provides a foundation for identifying human resource management (HRM) interventions customized for working females. It also proposes a framework implementable in the recovery phase, deploying critical strategic shifts like reflection, recommitment and re-engagement of the women workforce in order to maximize their efficacy for rapidly evolving organizational priorities.

The purpose of this study is to assess the gender disparities in the workers' perception of whether “decent work” standards exist in their current job and workplace in the Egyptian context.

This study uses quantitative data. A survey was utilised to assess workers' perceptions of decent work. The sample was selected based on age as the study aims to measure gender disparities in the perception among Generation Y and Z. Frequency table for each question and independent sample T-test were utilised in order to compare the variable means between females and males and whether any of those means are significantly different from each other.

The key findings of this research show that women in Egypt believe they have fewer opportunity to progress professionally and raise their salaries than males, particularly in male-dominated fields like engineering, construction and information technology. Furthermore, the women surveyed, particularly working mothers, emphasised that they struggle with their workload and working time more than men, affecting their work–life balance. However, there was no significant disparity between men and women in the other aspects of decent work examined in this article, which included social protection, health and safety, and meaningful compensation.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first group of studies assessing the gender disparities in the workers' perception of whether “decent work” standards exist in the Egyptian workplace.

This paper aims to explore barriers to employment, problems caused by working, motivation to work and job satisfaction of women employed in hotels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study surveyed 385 women working in 75 hotels in KSA and UAE. The sample included citizens of KSA and UAE (n = 177), Arab and non-Arab expatriates (n = 208) and women with and without caring responsibilities for children or adults. The survey responses were analysed by stratifying the sample, using mean-comparison tests to consider sub-sample differences and regression analysis to quantify associations with job satisfaction.

Women in the sample with childcare or other caring responsibilities were more likely to report work-family conflicts which were in turn linked negatively to job satisfaction. These women were also the most positive about flexible employment practices. Nationals and expatriate Arabs reported higher levels of satisfaction with managerial aspects of their work. However, nationals in KSA recorded lower levels of job satisfaction in relation to pay and conditions and also said that low salaries were a barrier to taking up employment in the first place. Negative social attitudes towards women working in hotels were a particular concern for nationals and expatriate Arab women.

The sample is not representative of all females working in hotels in UAE and KSA, and the results cannot be generalised. However, implications include the need to examine the experiences of self-initiated expatriate women and consider women as part of a family system.

The analysis is based on original data collected through fieldwork. The findings generate new insights on the experiences of women working in hotels in KSA and UAE.