This article examines trends in patterns of employment within contemporary retailing. It focuses upon five supermarkets in the Lancaster area. In each store the proportion of part-timers had increased during the 1980s and in four cases it stood at over 70 per cent in 1990. However, there were marked differences in the proportions of female full-time and part-time employees who were married. Management reported similar perceptions of the relative advantages and disadvantages of employing married women within their stores. These belief systems coexisted with radically divergent recruitment strategies by these managements. These variations were embedded within typical recruitment strategies in each of the firms examined.