Much of the evidence that Selmi and Cahn use to support their arguments that work-family policies should focus on the needs of working class women is based on the findings reported in The Time Divide, by Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, summarized in the box that precedes this reading. Review it to help you answer these questions.

(a) Selmi and Cahn argue that “An entrenched feature of the labor market is that good jobs tend to be good across the board. Bad, or low-paying jobs, on the other hand, tend to have no significant advantages over higher-wage jobs.” Do the statistics seem to support their claim?

(b) What implications do these statistics have for work/life balance proposals that would create more part-time work? Selmi and Cahn point out that “Many European countries have far more extensive part-time sectors than the United States, and nowhere do we find a robust parttime market in which workers are not penalized in either wages or promotional opportunities for working part-time. Equally clear, wherever an extensive part-time market has been implemented, part-time work is almost exclusively the domain of women. And just as was true in the United States, many European part-time workers would like to work longer hours. In the Netherlands, which has the most extensive part-time sector in Europe, up to 40 percent of part-time workers would prefer to work longer hours.”