Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
Swiss men move to part-time work more often in occupations that support work-life balance
Jan Müller and Youngjoo Cha's 16-year study of Swiss labour data finds only one in ten full-time men who want part-time hours goes on to cut them. Men make the move more often in occupations that support work-life balance, so for employers the evidence points at workplace norms.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- The share of Swiss men working part-time doubled from about 10% in 2000 to more than 20%, while across the OECD it rose from just over 8% to under 13% by 2025.
- The authors scored each occupation in each period for work-devotion expectations, work-life balance support and male-breadwinner norms, using job ads and household-panel answers.
- In occupations with strong male-breadwinner norms and high devotion expectations, few men came to prefer part-time work or moved into it voluntarily.
- Medicine, one of the professions where breadwinner norms receded most, saw a rise in the number of male doctors switching to part-time hours.
- The analysis covers only men who began in full-time jobs, a relatively well-off group compared with underemployed or unemployed men.
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Why it matters
- decision A firm that opens reduced hours to men is drawing on demand already on its payroll, since most men who say they want part-time schedules are still working full-time.
- constraint If more women entering a field moves both its norms and men's choices, a firm cannot treat the study as a forecast of how much uptake its own policy change would buy.
- precedent Medicine loosened its breadwinner norm despite heavy overtime, which gives other long-hours professions a documented Swiss case to cite when arguing their culture can move.
The study joins three data sets. Müller, a sociologist at the University of Zurich, and Cha, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, combined the Federal Statistical Office's Swiss Labour Force Survey, the Swiss Household Panel and the Swiss Job Market Monitor for 2004 to 2020, and published the result in Community, Work & Family [4]. Each man's record carries his hours, his stated preference, his age, his salary and his partner's employment status [15]. The occupation scores are recalculated for every observation period [5]. A one-year snapshot could only compare doctors with engineers; repeated scores let the analysis follow a single occupation as its norms change.
The larger finding is the distance between preference and practice. Nearly 10% of full-time men develop a preference for part-time work each year [6]. Müller called that "a significant amount" [16], and called the share who then reduce their hours "not very many" [7]. Put as a count, about nine in ten men who would rather work part-time stay on full-time schedules [1]. The phys.org summary reports neither the size of the occupational effects nor the time window over which the follow-through is counted.
Müller's own comment on medicine carries the main caution about cause. Of doctors, he said: "It surprised me in a job with so much overtime." He added: "This trend may be partly linked to the increasing number of women in the profession." [11] If more women entering a field shift both its norms and men's choices, the norm scores and the part-time moves would climb together without one driving the other.
The setting matters too. In 2025, 40% of Switzerland's workforce was part-time, including 60% of working women [1] [2]. Among the 38 OECD countries only the Netherlands ranks higher [3]. Occupational norms could work differently where shorter hours are rare, and the Swiss data cannot test that.
I think the study supports a narrow claim for employers. The occupations where support for work-life balance has grown are the ones where more men have come to prefer part-time work and to move into it voluntarily [17]. The authors argue that social norms have to change alongside institutional rules, and Müller expects that falling stigma, so far seen mainly among the most privileged workers, will spread part-time work more widely [13].
He does not regard part-time work as better than full-time work in itself, according to the article, but is convinced that people who can follow their preferences end up with less stress and greater equality [14].
What to watch
- Whether the full Community, Work & Family paper reports effect sizes for the occupation scores and the time window over which the one-in-ten switch is measured.
- Replication in OECD countries where men's part-time share is far below Switzerland's, to see if occupational norms predict uptake there too.
- Labour data after 2020, which would show whether the gap between men's preference for part-time hours and actual switches has narrowed.