Part-Time Work and Women's Careers: a Decomposition of the Gender Promotion Gap

This paper studies the effect of working hours on vertical sex segregation using Belgian micro-data on promotions. Using Yun decompositions we find that more than 40% of the promotion gaps between men and women can be explained by gender differences in contract hours, overtime hours and occasional late work. The fact that women often work in sectors that offer less promotion possibilities is another important factor. The presence of children strongly affects the promotion chances of female employees, but not those of the male employees in our sample. This evidence supports theories that relate the availability of part-time work to the degree of vertical segregation in countries.