Citation

Warren T, Lyonette C. Br. J. Sociol. 2020; 71(2): 382-402.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, London School of Economics and Political Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1468-4446.12741

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Research on part-time work has concentrated over many decades on the experiences of women but male part-time employment is growing in the UK. This article addresses two sizable gaps in knowledge concerning male part-timers: are men's part-time jobs of lower quality than men's full-time jobs? Are male part-timers more or less job-satisfied compared to their full-time peers? A fundamental part of both interrogations is whether men's part-time employment varies by occupational class. The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part-timers. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the ?grateful slave? debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low-quality part-time jobs. Innovatively, this article draws upon those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part-time employment. Based upon analysis of a large quantitative data set, the results provide clear evidence of low-quality male part-time employment in the UK, when compared with men's full-time jobs. Men working part-time also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs. Male part-timers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear ?lead? both in bad job quality and low satisfaction. The article asks whether decreasingly satisfied male part-time workers should be termed ?ungrateful slaves?? It unpacks the ?grateful slave? metaphor and, after doing so, rejects its value for the ongoing analysis of part-time jobs in the formal labor market.

Keywords

class; job quality; job satisfaction; men's work; part-time employment