Part-time work and retirement in Spain, towards a system without gender discrimination
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13582291231176518 |
| Author | Enrique Devesa Carpio,Mar Devesa Carpio,Inmaculada Domínguez Fabián,Borja Encinas Goenechea,Robert Meneu Gaya |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International Journal of
Discrimination and the Law
2023, Vol. 23(3) 216–239
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13582291231176518
journals.sagepub.com/home/jdi
Part-time work and retirement
in Spain, towards a system
without gender discrimination
Enrique Devesa Carpio
1,2
, Mar Devesa Carpio
2
,
Inmaculada Dom´
ınguez Fabi´
an
3
, Borja Encinas Goenechea
3
and Robert Meneu Gaya
2
Abstract
In Spain, part-time work is considered female, given that 73% of this type of work
contract is carried out by women. The conditions for accessing and calculating the
retirement pension for part-time workers have been modified in recent years. This has
been the result of several judgments of European courts that conclude the existence of
indirect gender discrimination. This paper analyses the measures that have been
regulated after the aforementioned judgments to assess whether indirect gender
discrimination has disappeared from the social protection system in Spain. This paper
highlights the effect of the regulatory changes, some of them since 2019, and points out
some pending issues, that if they were carried out, would ensure gender discrimination
is effectively eliminated.
Keywords
Part-time work, social security, retirement pension, gender discrimination
JEL Codes
J7, J8, K0, H55
1
Econom´
ıa Financiera y Actuarial, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
2
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
3
University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
Corresponding author:
Inmaculada Dom´
ınguez Fabi´
an, University of Extremadura, Faculty of Business, Finance and Tourism, Avenida
de la Universidad s/n, C´
aceres 10001, Spain.
Email: idomingu@unex.es
Introduction
The regulation of part-time employment contracts was first introduced in Spain in
1980 and since then it has been the subject of numerous and profound reforms. In most
cases, the objective of these reforms has been to provide the labour market with greater
flexibility and, in this way, favour job creation.
In Spain, in 2019, according to INE (National Institute of Statistics) data, there were
almost three million part-time workers, of which 74% were women, which without any
doubt allows us to confirm that the part-time contract is fundamentally female. In addition,
the European Labour Force Survey shows that part-time work is not sought by women,
but is accepted due to their inability to find a full-time job.
As Dur´
an (2007) points out, part-time work does not only mean working less, but it
also means having a particular status, a specific position generally reserved for women. As
Ort´
ız (2014) points out, the literature on the subject is polarised between a sector that
highlights the growth of female employment due to the conditions that enable contractual
agreements such as this one (Sundstr¨
om, 1991,1993,2003), as opposed to others who
consider that female part-time employment constitutes a form of channelling low-skilled
jobs (Gallie and Zhou, 2011), with lower wages (Bardasi and Gornick, 2008;Fouarge and
Muffells, 2009;Manning and Petrongolo, 2008).
They also consider that their chances of accessing labour benefits, such as pensions,
health insurance, and unemployment benefits are reduced (Gallie et al., 1998;Garc´
ıa-
Perrote, 2000;Ginn and Arber, 1998;Kalleberg et al., 2000;Vald´
es, 2002) and fewer
opportunities for career promotion are provided (Gallie et al., 1998;Russo and Hassink,
2008). Baker (1998) analyses the sex discrimination against part-time workers from a
legal point of view.
According to Panizo (2003), social protection systems were created when labour
contracting was based on stable and full-time contracts; therefore, there are some dif-
ficulties to adapt the rules of the scheme to the particularities of part-time contracts.
The main problem to achieve an adequate social protection model for part-time
workers, whose majority are women, lies in the difficulty to find a regulation that makes
the basic system principles compatible. The contributory principle must be matched with
the right to adequate pensions, but it is necessary to combine the principles of equality and
non-discrimination in access to benefits, aiming to guarantee the system’sfinancial
balance in the long term.
For more than 30 years, the Spanish Social Security system has underprote cted part-time
workers, and with that, women. Evidence of this are the various court judgements, at national
and international levels, which have successively declared null and void the national reg -
ulations concerning access and calculation of the retirement pension of these workers.
The objective of this paper is to analyse whether the part-time contract is indeed a
female contract and whether part-time workers suffer indirect sex discrimination in the
access and calculation of social protection for retirement in Spain. We will analyse the
different judgements and regulatory changes that have taken place in recent years. We will
assess whether, despite everything, indirect discrimination continues to be observed, and
if so, we will make proposals on how it should be eliminated.
Devesa Carpio et al. 217
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