Family-related working schedule flexibility across Europe

Working time flexibility is a potentially important lever to foster the reconciliation of work, family, and private life. Giving workers greater autonomy and more control over their working times could empower them to better balance their work and non-work demands. This could then in turn lead to less work-family conflict, greater female labour force participation, higher fertility and greater gender equality on the labour market. In this report, we draw on two indicators, namely whether workers report 1) the possibility of varying the start and/or end of working day for family reasons (by at least one hour), and 2) the possibility of organising working time in order to take whole days off for family reasons (without using holidays). Our findings show that there is considerable cross-national variation in the reported availability of family-related working schedule flexibility that may be explained by economic factors and the workers’ age. The presence of young children in the household had hardly any effect on the availability of work schedule flexibility. These findings suggest a mismatch between the need for and the availability of flexible working times. This short statistical report is part of a series of reports on gender equality in the work force and reconciliation of work, family and private life. These reports have been commissioned by the Justice Directorate General of the European Commission. The study was jointly undertaken by RAND Europe and the University of Groningen. These reports should be of interest to policy makers and academics with an interest in improving gender equality in the work force and improving the compatibility of having a career in combination with a family and private life.