At 37, Remco Vermaire is the youngest partner in his law firm. His banker clients expect him on call constantly — except on Fridays, when he looks after his two children.

Fourteen of the firm’s 33 lawyers work part time. Some clients do, too.

“Working four days a week is now the rule rather than the exception among my friends,” said Vermaire, the firm’s first lawyer to take a “daddy day” in 2006.

Within a year, all the other male lawyers with young children followed suit.

For reasons that blend tradition and modernity, three in four working Dutch women already work part time. Female-dominated sectors like health and education operate almost entirely on job-sharing; even childless women and mothers of grown children trade income for time off. That has exacted an enduring price on women’s financial independence.

But at the same time, the four-day workweek has ceased being a woman’s prerogative and become a powerful tool to attract and retain talent in a competitive labour market. Indeed, for a growing group of younger professionals, the appetite for a shorter, more flexible workweek appears to be spreading, with implications for everything from gender identity to rush-hour traffic.

On average, men still increase their hours when they have children. But with one in three Dutch men now either working part-time or squeezing a full-time job into four days, the “Papa dag” has become part of the language. Nearly a quarter of Dutch men have reduced hours.

Dutch fathers are vocal about altering their work-life balance. The government awarded a Modern Man Prize for breaking gender stereotypes. Rutger Groot Wassink won for co-founding a campaign that promotes part-time work for men — and for working four days a week himself.

“Men have been excluded from this debate for too long,” said Wassink.

And many are making significant shifts. In Tilburg, Radboud van Hal leads Achmea, the largest Dutch insurance company. He breakfasts and dines with his family, and plays soccer on Wednesday afternoons. He still works a 40-hour week.

At his office building, employees have smart phones, laptops and lockers, but no designated desks.

The trend is moving into international companies as well. At the Dutch Microsoft headquarters, Ineke Hoekman, head of human resources and mother of two, used to work part-time. But when the company moved into a space without designated work stations and employees were told to work “anywhere, any time,” she gradually went back to full-time. She makes Friday conference calls from her son’s ball practice.

Ninety-five per cent of Dutch Microsoft employees work from home at least one day a week; a full quarter do so four out of five days.

But even as men reach for part-time work, Dutch feminists worry about the enduring damage it has done to women.

Seventy-five per cent of Dutch women who work are part-timers, compared with 41 per cent in other EU countries, according to Saskia Keuzenkamp at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research.

At 70 per cent, employment of Dutch women is high, but they work on average no more than 24 hours weekly. More than half — 57 per cent — are considered financially dependent, earning less than 70 per cent of the gross minimum wage.

According to Ellen de Bruin, author of Why Dutch Women Don’t Get Depressed, Dutch women do not seem to mind much. She notes that 96 per cent of Dutch part-timers tell pollsters they do not want to work more; the Netherlands is that rare country where — even taking housework and child care into account — women work less than men.

For now, part-time work remains most entrenched in areas where women are heavily represented.