The reform of school timetables: a barometer of inequalities in the labour market?

The 2013 reform of school timetables, which reallocated half a day’s teaching to Wednesday mornings for pupils in nursery and primary school, represents a minor revolution in the organisation of social schedules. This paper shows that school timetables not only have an impact on children’s learning patterns, but also influence women’s decisions regarding labour supply. The organisation of school hours highlights two types of inequality in the labour market: inequality between women and men, and inequality between women with and without qualifications. Before the introduction of the school timetable reform, twice as many women as men whose youngest child was of primary school age did not work on Wednesdays, and thus adapted their working lives to their children’s school schedule. Furthermore, the decision to work on Wednesdays or not was correlated with educational attainment, with women with higher education qualifications being less likely to work on Wednesdays than women without such qualifications, even though they work more hours on average per week. The reorganisation of school timetables introduced by the 2013 reform led to a reorganisation of women’s working hours: whilst the reform did not, in the short term, increase the number of hours worked per week, it enabled a greater number of women to work on Wednesdays, leading, in less than two years, to a 15 per cent reduction in the gap in their labour force participation on that day of the week compared with men.