Navigating reduced hours working at senior/executive management levels: is job share the way forward?

The challenges of sustaining a senior executive career across the life course, alongside other aspects of life, such as child and elder care, are well established. Long working hours are critical to career advancement and women, more so than men, often seek a reduction in working hours at stages in the life-course that are also career defining.

Part-time work has long been associated with low pay and poor quality work (Nightingale, 2019; Warren and Lyonette, 2018) and women’s careers can often stall, leading to gender inequalities in advancement and earnings.

Our previous research showed that women working at middle level management levels faced stagnating careers when they reduced their working hours, losing opportunities for internal and external progression and development (Durbin and Tomlinson, 2010; 2024).

We compare and contrast two forms of reduced hours working in executive and senior management roles: a reduction in working days with a reduction in pay, typically taking the form of a ‘four-day week’; and job share partnerships.  In doing so, we ask: how can alternative working patterns (reduced hours) of senior managers and executives be enacted and sustained? What are the challenges senior managers and executives face when they reduce their hours? How successful are they in navigating reduced hours in terms of workload and achieving the desired modification to their working lives?